Functional Subspace Projection for Detection of Coordinated Stealthy Attacks in Power Systems

Abstract

Modern power grids are increasingly vulnerable to coordinated cyber-attacks, particularly false data injection attacks (FDIAs) that can evade conventional residual-based detectors. While most existing detection methods rely on instantaneous measurements, coordinated dynamic attacks can remain stealthy at each time step while introducing structured temporal deviations. This paper develops a joint framework for modeling and detecting such attacks in multi-area power systems. A time-aggregated attack model is first formulated to capture temporal evolution and inter-area coordination. For detection, a kernel-embedded functional subspace detection (KEFSD) method is proposed, which models residual trajectories in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) and employs RKHS-constrained functional principal component analysis (PCA) to identify anomalous temporal patterns. Simulation results on a modified IEEE 14-bus system demonstrates the proposed method achieves improved detection performance compared to the conventional residual based 2-norm detector.