Digital forensics investigation procedures of smart grid environment

Smart grids have been widely used around the world. The security of this system is debatable among the researchers because this area requires an improvement in order to reassure the grid is secured from cyberattacks. However, many malware were found attacking the smart grid systems such as Stuxnet, Flames, Triton, etc. Some of them are designed to avoid being tracked by a forensic investigator. The perpetrators used the fragility of digital evidence as an advantage to launch an attack on the smart grid without leaving traces. Technology development gives challenges to digital forensic procedures because the data volume is much higher. Thus, the digital forensic procedure needs to be redesigned, modified, and improved to capture traces and handle digital evidence. This paper aims to propose a digital forensic procedure to guide investigators to perform the digital forensic investigation, especially in a smart grid environment. This paper has discussed several suitable tools and techniques in digital forensic investigation to solve the problem or the challenges. This study discussed two cyberattacks examples and simulated the attack using a testbed to guide forensic investigators based on the proposed digital forensic procedure. Examples of cyberattacks are Distributed Denial of Service and False Data Injection attacks. This paper presented an appropriate methodology and relevant forensic tools to ensure the evidence's integrity during collection and analysis as legal evidence in court

Performance study of reduced graphene oxide speek for direct methanol application

The purpose of this research is to study the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) performance testing of modified membrane electrode assembly (MEA) of reduced graphene oxide sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK/rGO). The reduction of oxide method was employed to synthesize reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and solution blending technique was applied to form SPEEK/rGO membrane. The structure of rGO and SPEEK were confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The electrical properties of rGO measured show high conductivity at 1.36 x 104 S/m. The DMFC performance of the blended rGO with SPEEK was substantially enhanced by 8 – 15% of open circuit voltage (OCV) and power density compared to those of commercial nafion 112 membrane. Therefore, the fabrication of SPEEK/rGO membrane is proven to improve the DMFC performance

Forensic analysis on false data injection attack on IoT environment

False Data Injection Attack (FDIA) is an attack that could compromise Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) devices where an attacker may mislead real power consumption by falsifying meter usage from end-users smart meters. Due to the rapid development of the Internet, cyber attackers are keen on exploiting domains such as finance, metering system, defense, healthcare, governance, etc. Securing IoT networks such as the electric power grid or water supply systems has emerged as a national and global priority because of many vulnerabilities found in this area and the impact of the attack through the internet of things (IoT) components. In this modern era, it is a compulsion for better awareness and improved methods to counter such attacks in these domains. This paper aims to study the impact of FDIA in AMI by performing data analysis from network traffic logs to identify digital forensic traces. An AMI testbed was designed and developed to produce the FDIA logs. Experimental results show that forensic traces can be found from the evidence logs collected through forensic analysis are sufficient to confirm the attack. Moreover, this study has produced a table of attributes for evidence collection when performing forensic investigation on FDIA in the AMI environment

Forensic analysis on distributed denial of service attack on IoT environment

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to render the users unable to access a server service, usually by temporarily disabling or suspending its hosting server services. With the increase popularity of IoT devices such as the massive deployment of smart meter in Advance Metering Infrastructure, can create a situation where attacker can launch a DDoS attack in this environment. This work will focus on analyzing the impact of DDoS attack in AMI by performing data analysis from DDoS attacks that performed from IoT testbed. The testbed is use as a platform to perform the testing using multiple variation of DDoS attacks that can be launch from IoT devices. It also helps the system detect any DDoS attacks against IoT devices by tracking any abnormalities in the communication inside the testbed and connected IoT devices