Visible to the public Detecting Attacks on Synchrophasor Protocol Using Machine Learning Algorithms

TitleDetecting Attacks on Synchrophasor Protocol Using Machine Learning Algorithms
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2021
AuthorsKnesek, Kolten, Wlazlo, Patrick, Huang, Hao, Sahu, Abhijeet, Goulart, Ana, Davis, Kate
Conference Name2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm)
Date Publishedoct
Keywordsc37.118, command injection attacks, composability, critical infrastructure security, industrial control systems, machine learning, machine learning algorithms, Metrics, phasor measurement units, PMU, Protocols, pubcrawl, Resiliency, scapy, Smart grids, Tools, Voltage measurement
AbstractPhasor measurement units (PMUs) are used in power grids across North America to measure the amplitude, phase, and frequency of an alternating voltage or current. PMU's use the IEEE C37.118 protocol to send telemetry to phasor data collectors (PDC) and human machine interface (HMI) workstations in a control center. However, the C37.118 protocol utilizes the internet protocol stack without any authentication mechanism. This means that the protocol is vulnerable to false data injection (FDI) and false command injection (FCI). In order to study different scenarios in which C37.118 protocol's integrity and confidentiality can be compromised, we created a testbed that emulates a C37.118 communication network. In this testbed we conduct FCI and FDI attacks on real-time C37.118 data packets using a packet manipulation tool called Scapy. Using this platform, we generated C37.118 FCI and FDI datasets which are processed by multi-label machine learning classifier algorithms, such as Decision Tree (DT), k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN), and Naive Bayes (NB), to find out how effective machine learning can be at detecting such attacks. Our results show that the DT classifier had the best precision and recall rate.
DOI10.1109/SmartGridComm51999.2021.9631996
Citation Keyknesek_detecting_2021