Man‐in‐the‐middle attacks and defence in a power system cyber‐physical testbed

Wlazlo, Patrick; Sahu, Abhijeet; Mao, Zeyu; Huang, Hao; Goulart, Ana; Davis, Katherine; Zonouz, Saman

doi:10.1049/cps2.12014

Man‐in‐the‐middle attacks and defence in a power system cyber‐physical testbed

Journal Article · Mon Jun 28 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1049/cps2.12014· OSTI ID:1798924

Wlazlo, Patrick ^[1]; ^[2]; Mao, Zeyu ^[2]; Huang, Hao ^[2]; ^[1]; Davis, Katherine ^[2]; Zonouz, Saman ^[3]

Electronics Systems Engineering Technology Texas A&,M University College Station TX USA
Electrical and Computer Engineering Texas A&,M University College Station TX USA
Electrical and Computer Engineering Rutgers University New Brunswick NJ USA

Abstract

Man‐in‐The‐Middle (MiTM) attacks present numerous threats to a smart grid. In a MiTM attack, an intruder embeds itself within a conversation between two devices to either eavesdrop or impersonate one of the devices, making it appear to be a normal exchange of information. Thus, the intruder can perform false data injection (FDI) and false command injection (FCI) attacks that can compromise power system operations, such as state estimation, economic dispatch, and automatic generation control (AGC). Very few researchers have focused on MiTM methods that are difficult to detect within a smart grid. To address this, we are designing and implementing multi‐stage MiTM intrusions in an emulation‐based cyber‐physical power system testbed against a large‐scale synthetic grid model to demonstrate how such attacks can cause physical contingencies such as misguided operation and false measurements. MiTM intrusions create FCI, FDI, and replay attacks in this synthetic power grid. This work enables stakeholders to defend against these stealthy attacks, and we present detection mechanisms that are developed using multiple alerts from intrusion detection systems and network monitoring tools. Our contribution will enable other smart grid security researchers and industry to develop further detection mechanisms for inconspicuous MiTM attacks.

View Journal Article

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: OE0000895

OSTI ID:: 1798924

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1862418

Journal Information:: IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications, Journal Name: IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 6; ISSN 2398-3396

Publisher:: Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United Kingdom

Language:: English

References (17)

Cyber security in the Smart Grid: Survey and challenges Wang, Wenye; Lu, Zhuo Computer Networks, Vol. 57, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2012.12.017	journal	April 2013
A3D: Attention-based auto-encoder anomaly detector for false data injection attacks Kundu, Arnav; Sahu, Abhijeet; Serpedin, Erchin Electric Power Systems Research, Vol. 189 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2020.106795	journal	December 2020
Man-in-the-middle attack test-bed investigating cyber-security vulnerabilities in smart grid SCADA systems Yang, Y.; Pranggono, B.; Littler, T. International Conference on Sustainable Power Generation and Supply (SUPERGEN 2012) https://doi.org/10.1049/cp.2012.1831	conference	January 2012
Attack Detection and Mitigation Techniques in Industrial Control System -Smart Grid DNP3 Darwish, Ihab; Saadawi, Tarek 2018 1st International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security (ICDIS) https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDIS.2018.00028	conference	April 2018
A Cyber Topology Model for the Texas 2000 Synthetic Electric Power Grid Wlazlo, Patrick; Price, Kevin; Veloz, Christian 2019 Principles, Systems and Applications of IP Telecommunications (IPTComm) https://doi.org/10.1109/IPTCOMM.2019.8921260	conference	October 2019
An Event-Triggered Secondary Control Strategy With Network Delay in Islanded Microgrids Zhang, Zhanqiang; Dou, Chunxia; Yue, Dong IEEE Systems Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2018.2832065	journal	June 2019
CORE: A real-time network emulator Ahrenholz, Jeff; Danilov, Claudiu; Henderson, Thomas R. MILCOM 2008 - 2008 IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM) https://doi.org/10.1109/MILCOM.2008.4753614	conference	November 2008
Stuxnet: Dissecting a Cyberwarfare Weapon Langner, Ralph IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine, Vol. 9, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1109/MSP.2011.67	journal	May 2011
Implementing a real-time cyber-physical system test bed in RTDS and OPNET Chen, Bo; Butler-Purry, Karen L.; Goulart, Ana 2014 North American Power Symposium (NAPS) https://doi.org/10.1109/NAPS.2014.6965381	conference	September 2014
Simulation of Man in the Middle Attack On Smart Grid Testbed Fritz, Jared J.; Sagisi, Joseph; James, John SoutheastCon 2019, 2019 SoutheastCon https://doi.org/10.1109/SoutheastCon42311.2019.9020426	conference	April 2019
Delay-Tolerant Predictive Power Compensation Control for Photovoltaic Voltage Regulation Zhang, Zhanqiang; Mishra, Yateendra; Yue, Dong IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Vol. 17, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2020.3024069	journal	July 2021
ISAAC: The Idaho CPS Smart Grid Cybersecurity Testbed Oyewumi, Ibukun A.; Jillepalli, Ananth A.; Richardson, Philip 2019 IEEE Texas Power and Energy conference (TPEC) https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEC.2019.8662189	conference	February 2019
Multidimensional Intrusion Detection System for IEC 61850-Based SCADA Networks Yang, Yi; Xu, Hai-Qing; Gao, Lei IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 32, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRD.2016.2603339	journal	April 2017
Grid Structural Characteristics as Validation Criteria for Synthetic Networks Birchfield, Adam B.; Xu, Ti; Gegner, Kathleen M. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 32, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2016.2616385	journal	July 2017
Modeling Load Redistribution Attacks in Power Systems Yuan, Yanling; Li, Zuyi; Ren, Kui IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, Vol. 2, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2011.2123925	journal	June 2011
Analyzing the Cyber-Physical Impact of Cyber Events on the Power Grid Liu, Ren; Vellaithurai, Ceeman; Biswas, Saugata S. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, Vol. 6, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2015.2432013	journal	September 2015
The Use of System in the Loop, Hardware in the Loop, and Co-modeling of Cyber-Physical Systems in Developing and Evaluating New Smart Grid Solutions Kezunovic, Mladen; Esmailian, Ahad; Govindarasu, Manimaran Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2017.385	conference	January 2017

Similar Records

Cybersecurity Challenges in Low-Inertia Power-Electronics-Dominated Grids

Journal Article · Sun Jan 12 19:00:00 EST 2025 · IEEE Power Electronics Magazine · OSTI ID:2572768

Man‐in‐the‐middle attacks and defence in a power system cyber‐physical testbed

Citation Formats

References (17)

Similar Records

Related Subjects