Biblio

Smart grid systems data has been exposed to several threats and attacks from different perspectives and have resulted in several system failures. Obtaining security of data and key exposure and enhancing system ability in data collection and transmission process are challenging, on the grounds smart grid data is sensitive and enormous sum. In this paper we introduce smart grid data security method along with advanced Cipher text policy attribute based encryption (CP-ABE). Cloud supported IoT is widely used in smart grid systems. Smart IoT devices collect data and perform status management. Data obtained from the IOT devices will be divided into blocks and encrypted data will be stored in different cloud server with different encrypted keys even when one cloud server is assaulted and encrypted key is exposed data cannot be decrypted, thereby the transmission and encryption process are done in correspondingly. We protect access-tree structure information even after the data is shared to user by solving revocation problem in which cloud will inform data owner to revoke and update encryption key after user has downloaded the data, which preserves the data privacy from unauthorized users. The analysis of the system concludes that our proposed system can meet the security requirements in smart grid systems along with cloud-Internet of things.

The massive integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) into power systems is a major challenge but it also provides new opportunities for network operation. For example, with a large amount of RES available at HV subtransmission level, it is possible to exploit them as controlling resources in islanding conditions. Thus, a procedure for off-line evaluation of islanded operation feasibility in the presence of RES is proposed. The method finds which generators and loads remain connected after islanding to balance the island's real power maximizing the amount of supplied load and assuring the network's long-term security. For each possible islanding event, the set of optimal control actions (load/generation shedding) to apply in case of actual islanding, is found. The procedure is formulated as a Mixed Integer Non-Linear Problem (MINLP) and is solved using Genetic Algorithms (GAs). Results, including dynamic simulations, are shown for a representative HV subtransmission grid.

With the tighter integration of power system and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), power grid is becoming a typical cyber physical system (CPS). It is important to analyze the impact of the cyber event on power system, so that it is necessary to build a co-simulation system for studying the interaction between power system and ICT. In this paper, a cyber physical power system (CPPS) co-simulation platform is proposed, which includes the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation function. By using flexible interface, various simulation software for power system and ICT can be interconnected into the platform to build co-simulation tools for various simulation purposes. To demonstrate it as a proof, one simulation framework for real life cyber-attack on power system control is introduced. In this case, the real life denial-of-service attack on a router in automatic voltage control (AVC) is simulated to demonstrate impact of cyber-attack on power system.

In order to be more environmentally friendly, a lot of parts and aspects of life become electrified to reduce the usage of fossil fuels. This can be seen in the increased number of electrical vehicles in everyday life. This of course only makes a positive impact on the environment, if the electricity is produced environmentally friendly and comes from renewable sources. But when the green electrical power is produced, it still needs to be transported to where it's needed, which is not necessarily near the production site. In China, one of the ways to do this transport is to use High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology. This of course means, that the current has to be converted to DC before being transported to the end user. That implies that the converter stations are of great importance for the grid security. Therefore, a precise monitoring of the stations is necessary. Ideally, this could be accomplished with wireless sensor nodes with an autarkic energy supply. A role in this energy supply could be played by a thermoelectrical generator (TEG). But to assess the power generated in the specific environment, a simulation would be highly desirable, to evaluate the power gained from the temperature difference in the converter station. This paper proposes a method to simulate the generated power by combining a model for the generator with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model converter.

This paper proposes a software framework to embed the unit commitment problem into a power system dynamic simulator. A sub-hourly, mixed-integer linear programming Security Constrained Unit Commitment (SCUC) with a rolling horizon is utilized to account for the variations of the net load of the system. The SCUC is then included into time domain simulations to study the impact of the net-load variability and uncertainty on the dynamic behavior of the system using different scheduling time periods. A case study based on the 39-bus system illustrates the features of the proposed software framework.

Development of an attack-resilient smart grid depends heavily on the availability of a representative environment, such as a Cyber Physical Security (CPS) testbed, to accelerate the transition of state-of-the-art research work to industry deployment by experimental testing and validation. There is an ongoing initiative to develop an interconnected federated testbed to build advanced computing systems and integrated data sharing networks. In this paper, we present a distributed simulation for power system using federated testbed in the context of Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) cyber-physical security. In particular, we have applied the transmission line modeling (TLM) technique to split a first order two-bus system into two subsystems: source and load subsystems, which are running in geographically dispersed simulators, while exchanging system variables over the internet. We have leveraged the resources available at Iowa State University's Power Cyber Laboratory (ISU PCL) and the US Army Research Laboratory (US ARL) to perform the distributed simulation, emulate substation and control center networks, and further implement a data integrity attack and physical disturbances targeting WAMS application. Our experimental results reveal the computed wide-area network latency; and model validation errors. Further, we also discuss the high-level conceptual architecture, inspired by NASPInet, necessary for developing the CPS testbed federation.

Smart power grid is a perfect model of Cyber Physical System (CPS) which is an important component for a comfortable life. The major concern of the electrical network is safety and reliable operation. A cyber attacker in the operation of power system would create a major damage to the entire power system structure and affect the continuity of the power supply by adversely changing its parameters. A risk assessment method is presented for evaluating the cyber security assessment of power systems taking into consideration the need for protection systems. The paper considers the impact of bus and transmission line protection systems located in substations on the cyber physical performance of power systems. The proposed method is to simulate the response of power systems to sudden attacks on various power system preset value and parameters. This paper focuses on the cyber attacks which occur in a co-ordinated way so that many power system components will be in risk. The risk can be modelled as the combined probability of power system impact due to attacks and of successful interruption into the system. Stochastic Petri Nets is employed for assessing the risks. The effectiveness of the proposed cyber security risk assessment method is simulated for a IEEE39 bus system.

Real-time supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems use remote terminal units (RTUs) to monitor and manage the flow of power at electrical substations. As their connectivity to different utility and private networks increases, RTUs are becoming more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Some attacks seek to access RTUs to directly control power system devices with the intent to shed load or cause equipment damage. Other attacks (such as denial-of-service) target network availability and seek to block, delay, or corrupt communications between the RTU and the control center. In the most severe case, when communications are entirely blocked, the loss of an RTU can cause the power system to become unobservable. It is important to understand how losing an RTU impacts the system state (bus voltage magnitudes and angles). The system state is determined by the state estimator and serves as the input to other critical EMS applications. There is currently no systematic approach for assessing the cyber-physical impact of losing RTUs. This paper proposes a methodology for N-1 RTU cyber-physical security assessment that could benefit power system control and operation. We demonstrate our approach on the IEEE 14-bus system as well as on a synthetic 200-bus system.

In this paper we report preliminary results from the novel coupling of cyber-physical emulation and interdiction optimization to better understand the impact of a CrashOverride malware attack on a notional electric system. We conduct cyber experiments where CrashOverride issues commands to remote terminal units (RTUs) that are controlling substations within a power control area. We identify worst-case loss of load outcomes with cyber interdiction optimization; the proposed approach is a bilevel formulation that incorporates RTU mappings to controllable loads, transmission lines, and generators in the upper-level (attacker model), and a DC optimal power flow (DCOPF) in the lower-level (defender model). Overall, our preliminary results indicate that the interdiction optimization can guide the design of experiments instead of performing a “full factorial” approach. Likewise, for systems where there are important dependencies between SCADA/ICS controls and power grid operations, the cyber-physical emulations should drive improved parameterization and surrogate models that are applied in scalable optimization techniques.

Large-scale blackouts that have occurred in the past few decades have necessitated the need to do extensive research in the field of grid security assessment. With the aid of synchrophasor technology, which uses phasor measurement unit (PMU) data, dynamic security assessment (DSA) can be performed online. However, existing applications of DSA are challenged by variability in system conditions and unaccounted for measurement errors. To overcome these challenges, this research develops a DSA scheme to provide security prediction in real-time for load profiles of different seasons in presence of realistic errors in the PMU measurements. The major contributions of this paper are: (1) develop a DSA scheme based on PMU data, (2) consider seasonal load profiles, (3) account for varying penetrations of renewable generation, and (4) compare the accuracy of different machine learning (ML) algorithms for DSA with and without erroneous measurements. The performance of this approach is tested on the IEEE-118 bus system. Comparative analysis of the accuracies of the ML algorithms under different operating scenarios highlights the importance of considering realistic errors and variability in system conditions while creating a DSA scheme.

In operation centers, it is important to know the power transfer limit to guarantee the safety operation of the power system. The Voltage Stability Margin (VSM) is a widely used measure and needs to definition of a load growth direction (LGD) to be computed. However, different definitions of LGD can provide different VSMs and then the VSM may not be reliable. Besides, the measure of this power transfer limit usually is related to the Saddle-Node Bifurcation. In dynamic security assessment (DSA) is highly desirable to identify limit regions where the power system can operate safely due to Hopf (HB) and Saddle-Node (SNB) Bifurcations. This paper presents a modeling of the power system incorporating the LGD variation based on participation factors to evaluate the effects on the stability margin estimation due to HB and SNB. A direct method is used to calculate the stability margin of the power system for a given load direction. The analysis was performed in the IEEE 39 bus system.

This paper presents a methodology for utilizing Phasor Measurement units (PMUs) for procuring real time synchronized measurements for assessing the security of the power system dynamically. The concept of wide-area dynamic security assessment considers transient instability in the proposed methodology. Intelligent framework based approach for online dynamic security assessment has been suggested wherein the database consisting of critical features associated with the system is generated for a wide range of contingencies, which is utilized to build the data mining model. This data mining model along with the synchronized phasor measurements is expected to assist the system operator in assessing the security of the system pertaining to a particular contingency, thereby also creating possibility of incorporating control and preventive measures in order to avoid any unforeseen instability in the system. The proposed technique has been implemented on IEEE 39 bus system for accurately indicating the security of the system and is found to be quite robust in the case of noise in the measurement data obtained from the PMUs.

Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is a key component in the smart grid. Transmitting data robustly and reliably between the tremendous smart meters in the AMI is one of the most crucial tasks for providing various services in smart grid. Among the many efforts for designing practical routing protocols for the AMI, the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) proposed by the IETF ROLL working group is considered the most consolidated candidate. Resent research has shown cyber attacks such as blackhole attack and version number attack can seriously damage the performance of the network implementing RPL. The main reason that RPL is vulnerable to these kinds of attacks is the lack an authentication mechanism. In this paper, we study the impact of blackhole attacks on the performance of the AMI network and proposed a new blackhole attack that can bypass the existing defense mechanism. Then, we propose a cuckoo filter based RPL to defend the AMI network from blackhole attacks. We also give the security analysis of the proposed method.

System penetration testing is an important measure of discovering information system security issues. This paper summarizes and analyzes the high-risk problems found in the penetration testing of the artificial storm prediction system for power grid storm disasters from four aspects: application security, middleware security, host security and network security. In particular, in order to overcome the blindness of PGRDAIPS current SQL injection penetration test, this paper proposes a SQL blind bug based on improved second-order fragmentation reorganization. By modeling the SQL injection attack behavior and comparing the SQL injection vulnerability test in PGRDAIPS, this method can effectively reduce the blindness of SQL injection penetration test and improve its accuracy. With the prevalence of ubiquitous power internet of things, the electric power information system security defense work has to be taken seriously. This paper can not only guide the design, development and maintenance of disaster prediction information systems, but also provide security for the Energy Internet disaster safety and power meteorological service technology support.

In order to enhance the network security protection level of intelligent substation, this paper puts forward a model of intelligent substation network security defense system through the analysis of intelligent substation network security risk and protection demand, and using example proved the feasibility and effectiveness of the defense system. It is intelligent substation network security protection provides a new solution.

As power grid control systems become increasingly automated and distributed, security has become a significant design concern. Systems increasingly expose new avenues, at a variety of levels, for attackers to exploit and enable widespread disruptions and/or surveillance. Much prior work has explored the implications of attack models focused on false data injection at the front-end of the control system (i.e. during state estimation) [1]. Instead, in this paper we focus on characterizing the inherent cyber-attack vulnerabilities with power flow. Power flow (and power flow constraints) are at the core of many applications critical to operation of power grids (e.g. state estimation, economic dispatch, contingency analysis, etc.). We propose two algorithmic approaches for characterizing the vulnerability of buses within power grids to cyber-attacks. Specifically, we focus on measuring the instability of power flow to attacks which manifest as either voltage or power related errors. Our results show that attacks manifesting as voltage errors are an order of magnitude more likely to cause instability than attacks manifesting as power related errors (and 5x more likely for state estimation as compared to power flow).

The cyber-physical security of smart grid is of great importance since it directly concerns the normal operating of a system. Recently, researchers found that organized sequential attacks can incur large-scale cascading failure to the smart grid. In this paper, we focus on the line-switching sequential attack, where the attacker aims to trip transmission lines in a designed order to cause significant system failures. Our objective is to identify the critical line-switching attack sequence, which can be instructional for the protection of smart grid. For this purpose, we develop an evolutionary computation based vulnerability analysis framework, which employs particle swarm optimization to search the critical attack sequence. Simulation studies on two benchmark systems, i.e., IEEE 24 bus reliability test system and Washington 30 bus dynamic test system, are implemented to evaluate the performance of our proposed method. Simulation results show that our method can yield a better performance comparing with the reinforcement learning based approach proposed in other prior work.

A lot of organizations need effective resolutions to record and evaluate the existing enormous volume of information. Cloud computing as a facilitator offers scalable resources and noteworthy economic assistances as the decreased operational expenditures. This model increases a wide set of security and privacy problems that have to be taken into reflexion. Multi-occupancy, loss of control, and confidence are the key issues in cloud computing situations. This paper considers the present know-hows and a comprehensive assortment of both previous and high-tech tasks on cloud security and confidentiality. The paradigm shift that supplements the usage of cloud computing is progressively enabling augmentation to safety and privacy contemplations linked with the different facades of cloud computing like multi-tenancy, reliance, loss of control and responsibility. So, cloud platforms that deal with big data that have sensitive information are necessary to use technical methods and structural precautions to circumvent data defence failures that might lead to vast and costly harms.

The digitalization of the electric power industry and the development of territories isolated from the unified energy system are priorities in the development of the energy sector. Thanks to innovative solutions and digital technologies, it becomes possible to make more effective managing and monitoring. Such solution is IoT platform with intelligent control system implemented by software.

The rapid evolution of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services transforms the conventional electrical grid into a new paradigm called Smart Grid (SG). Even though SG brings significant improvements, such as increased reliability and better energy management, it also introduces multiple security challenges. One of the main reasons for this is that SG combines a wide range of heterogeneous technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices as well as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. The latter are responsible for monitoring and controlling the automatic procedures of energy transmission and distribution. Nevertheless, the presence of these systems introduces multiple vulnerabilities because their protocols do not implement essential security mechanisms such as authentication and access control. In this paper, we focus our attention on the security issues of the IEC 60870-5-104 (IEC-104) protocol, which is widely utilized in the European energy sector. In particular, we provide a SCADA threat model based on a Coloured Petri Net (CPN) and emulate four different types of cyber attacks against IEC-104. Last, we used AlienVault's risk assessment model to evaluate the risk level that each of these cyber attacks introduces to our system to confirm our intuition about their severity.

The smart grid aims to improve the efficiency, reliability and safety of the electric system via modern communication system, it's necessary to utilize cloud computing to process and store the data. In fact, it's a promising paradigm to integrate smart grid into cloud computing. However, access to cloud computing system also brings data security issues. This paper focuses on the protection of user privacy in smart meter system based on data combination privacy and trusted third party. The paper demonstrates the security issues for smart grid communication system and cloud computing respectively, and illustrates the security issues for the integration. And we introduce data chunk storage and chunk relationship confusion to protect user privacy. We also propose a chunk information list system for inserting and searching data.

Despite the benefits offered by smart grids, energy producers, distributors and consumers are increasingly concerned about possible security and privacy threats. These threats typically manifest themselves at runtime as new usage scenarios arise and vulnerabilities are discovered. Adaptive security and privacy promise to address these threats by increasing awareness and automating prevention, detection and recovery from security and privacy requirements' failures at runtime by re-configuring system controls and perhaps even changing requirements. This paper discusses the need for adaptive security and privacy in smart grids by presenting some motivating scenarios. We then outline some research issues that arise in engineering adaptive security. We particularly scrutinize published reports by NIST on smart grid security and privacy as the basis for our discussions.

A major challenge for utilities is energy theft, wherein malicious actors steal energy for financial gain. One such form of theft in the smart grid is the fraudulent amplification of energy generation measurements from DERs, such as photo-voltaics. It is important to detect this form of malicious activity, but in a way that ensures the privacy of customers. Not considering privacy aspects could result in a backlash from customers and a heavily curtailed deployment of services, for example. In this short paper, we present a novel privacy-preserving approach to the detection of manipulated DER generation measurements.

The smart grid changes the way energy is produced and distributed. In addition both, energy and information is exchanged bidirectionally among participating parties. Therefore heterogeneous systems have to cooperate effectively in order to achieve a common high-level use case, such as smart metering for billing or demand response for load curtailment. Furthermore, a substantial amount of personal data is often needed for achieving that goal. Capturing and processing personal data in the smart grid increases customer concerns about privacy and in addition, certain statutory and operational requirements regarding privacy aware data processing and storage have to be met. An increase of privacy constraints, however, often limits the operational capabilities of the system. In this paper, we present an approach that automates the process of finding an optimal balance between privacy requirements and operational requirements in a smart grid use case and application scenario. This is achieved by formally describing use cases in an abstract model and by finding an algorithm that determines the optimum balance by forward mapping privacy and operational impacts. For this optimal balancing algorithm both, a numeric approximation and - if feasible - an analytic assessment are presented and investigated. The system is evaluated by applying the tool to a real-world use case from the University of Southern California (USC) microgrid.

A successful Smart Grid system requires purpose-built security architecture which is explicitly designed to protect customer data confidentiality. In addition to the investment on electric power infrastructure for protecting the privacy of Smart Grid-related data, entities need to actively participate in the NIST interoperability framework process; establish policies and oversight structure for the enforcement of cyber security controls of the data through adoption of security best practices, personnel training, cyber vulnerability assessments, and consumer privacy audits.