On the security of SDN-enabled smartgrid systems

Software Defined Networks (SDNs) is a new networking paradigm that has gained a lot of attention in recent years especially in implementing data center networks and in providing efficient security solutions. The popularity of SDN and its attractive security features suggest that it can be used in the context of smart grid systems to address many of the vulnerabilities and security problems facing such critical infrastructure systems. This paper studies the impact of different cyber attacks that can target smart grid communication network which is implemented as a software defined network on the operation of the smart grid system in general. In particular, we perform different attack scenarios including DDoS attacks, location highjacking and link overloading against SDN networks of different controller types that include POX, Floodlight and RYU. Our experiments were carried out using the mininet simulator. The experiments show that SDN-enabled smartgrid systems are vulnerable to different types of attacks.