A Verifiable Framework for Cyber-Physical Attacks and Countermeasures in a Resilient Electric Power Grid

Zhigang Chu; Andrea Pinceti; Ramin Kaviani; Roozbeh Khodadadeh; Xingpeng Li; Jiazi Zhang; Karthik Saikumar; Mostafa Sahraei-Ardakani; Christopher Mosier; Robin Podmore; Kory Hedman; Oliver Kosut; Lalitha Sankar

arXiv · 2104.13908

A Verifiable Framework for Cyber-Physical Attacks and Countermeasures in a Resilient Electric Power Grid

Zhigang Chu·Andrea Pinceti·Ramin Kaviani·Roozbeh Khodadadeh·Xingpeng Li·Jiazi Zhang·Karthik Saikumar·Mostafa Sahraei-Ardakani·Christopher Mosier·Robin Podmore·Kory Hedman·Oliver Kosut·Lalitha Sankar

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the feasibility and physical consequences of cyber attacks against energy management systems (EMS). Within this framework, we have designed a complete simulation platform to emulate realistic EMS operations: it includes state estimation (SE), real-time contingency analysis (RTCA), and security constrained economic dispatch (SCED). This software platform allowed us to achieve two main objectives: 1) to study the cyber vulnerabilities of an EMS and understand their consequences on the system, and 2) to formulate and implement countermeasures against cyber-attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities. Our results show that the false data injection attacks against state estimation described in the literature do not easily cause base-case overflows because of the conservatism introduced by RTCA. For a successful attack, a more sophisticated model that includes all of the EMS blocks is needed; even in this scenario, only post-contingency violations can be achieved. Nonetheless, we propose several countermeasures that can detect changes due to cyber-attacks and limit their impact on the system.

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Zhigang Chu, Andrea Pinceti, Ramin Kaviani, Roozbeh Khodadadeh, Xingpeng Li, Jiazi Zhang, Karthik Saikumar, Mostafa Sahraei-Ardakani, Christopher Mosier, Robin Podmore, Kory Hedman, Oliver Kosut, Lalitha Sankar. 2021-04-28. A Verifiable Framework for Cyber-Physical Attacks and Countermeasures in a Resilient Electric Power Grid. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13908

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