Smart Grid Integrity Attacks: Characterizations and Countermeasures

Conference · Sat Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2011

OSTI ID:1035890

Giani, Annarita; Bitar, Eilyan; McQueen, Miles; Khargonekar, Pramod; Poolla, Kameshwar

Real power injections at loads and generators, and real power flows on selected lines in a transmission network are monitored, transmitted over a SCADA network to the system operator, and used in state estimation algorithms to make dispatch, re-balance and other energy management system [EMS] decisions. Coordinated cyber attacks of power meter readings can be arranged to be undetectable by any bad data detection algorithm. These unobservable attacks present a serious threat to grid operations. Of particular interest are sparse attacks that involve the compromise of a modest number of meter readings. An efficient algorithm to find all unobservable attacks [under standard DC load flow approximations] involving the compromise of exactly two power injection meters and an arbitrary number of power meters on lines is presented. This requires O(n2m) flops for a power system with n buses and m line meters. If all lines are metered, there exist canonical forms that characterize all 3, 4, and 5-sparse unobservable attacks. These can be quickly detected in power systems using standard graph algorithms. Known secure phase measurement units [PMUs] can be used as countermeasures against an arbitrary collection of cyber attacks. Finding the minimum number of necessary PMUs is NP-hard. It is shown that p + 1 PMUs at carefully chosen buses are sufficient to neutralize a collection of p cyber attacks.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1035890
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-11-22059
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALGORITHMS
APPROXIMATIONS
BUSES
COMMUNICATIONS
DETECTION
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
METERS
POWER METERS
POWER SYSTEMS
Smart grid
cyber security
integrity attacks
observability
synchro-phasors