Cyber Attacks in Power Grid ICT Systems Leading to Financial Disturbance

In this paper we present a model for expressing attacks on control protocols that involve the exchange of messages. Attacks are modeled using the notion of an attacker who can block and/or fabricate messages. These two attack mechanisms cover a variety of scenarios ranging from power grid failures to cyber attacks on oil pipelines. The model provides a method to syntactically express communication systems and attacks, which supports the development of attack and defense strategies. For demonstration purposes, an attack instance is modeled that shows how a targeted messaging attack can result in the rupture of a gas pipeline.

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A Cyber-secure Framework for Power Grids Based on Federated Learning

10.31224/osf.io/qghn8 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Shutang You

Keyword(s):

Power Systems ◽

Cyber Security ◽

Power Grid ◽

Main Idea ◽

Cyber Attacks ◽

Power Grids ◽

Grid Data ◽

Local Data ◽

Reliable Power Supply ◽

Secure Framework

Cyber security is important of power grids to ensure secure and reliable power supply. This paper presented a cyber- secure framework for power grids based on federated learning. In this framework, each entity, which may be a distribution/transmission/generation service provider or even a customer, can contribute to the overall system immunity and robustness to cyber-attacks, while not required to share local data, which may have privacy, legal and property concerns. The main idea is to use the federated learning framework to share the knowledge learned from local data instead of sharing power grid data itself. With complete knowledge learned from all data from the power grid, each entity is better positioned to defend the cyber-attacks and improve power grid resiliency. Future work on applying this federated learning based framework in power systems is also discussed.

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A Multi-Layer Security Scheme for Mitigating Smart Grid Vulnerability against Faults and Cyber-Attacks

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11219972 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (21) ◽

pp. 9972

Author(s):

Jian Chen ◽

Mohamed A. Mohamed ◽

Udaya Dampage ◽

Mostafa Rezaei ◽

Saleh H. Salmen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Smart Grid ◽

Cyber Security ◽

Power Grid ◽

Cyber Attacks ◽

Security Protocol ◽

Comprehensive Approach ◽

Transform Method ◽

General Role ◽

Uncertainty Parameters ◽

The Impact

To comply with electric power grid automation strategies, new cyber-security protocols and protection are required. What we now experience is a new type of protection against new disturbances namely cyber-attacks. In the same vein, the impact of disturbances arising from faults or cyber-attacks should be surveyed by network vulnerability criteria alone. It is clear that the diagnosis of vulnerable points protects the power grid against disturbances that would inhibit outages such as blackouts. So, the first step is determining the network vulnerable points, and then proposing a support method to deal with these outages. This research proposes a comprehensive approach to deal with outages by determining network vulnerable points due to physical faults and cyber-attacks. The first point, the network vulnerable points against network faults are covered by microgrids. As the second one, a new cyber-security protocol named multi-layer security is proposed in order to prevent targeted cyber-attacks. The first layer is a cyber-security-based blockchain method that plays a general role. The second layer is a cyber-security-based reinforcement-learning method, which supports the vulnerable points by monitoring data. On the other hand, the trend of solving problems becomes routine when no ambiguity arises in different sections of the smart grid, while it is far from a big network’s realities. Hence, the impact of uncertainty parameters on the proposed framework needs to be considered. Accordingly, the unscented transform method is modeled in this research. The simulation results illustrate that applying such a comprehensive approach can greatly pull down the probability of blackouts.

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