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International Journal of Information Security
Published in: International Journal of Information Security 2/2020

04-07-2019 | Regular Contribution

Attacks on smart grid: power supply interruption and malicious power generation

Authors: Sridhar Adepu, Nandha Kumar Kandasamy, Jianying Zhou, Aditya Mathur

Published in: International Journal of Information Security | Issue 2/2020

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Abstract

Electric power supply is an essential component for several sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, building management, water distribution, and transportation systems. Hence, any interruption in electric power is likely to have an undesirable impact on the overall operation of any residential or commercial ecosystem. The serious impacts of power supply interruption attacks have been realized in the recent cyber incidents such as the Ukraine power blackout. It is also evident from recent incidents that both network and process vulnerabilities are crucial for an adversary to cause an adverse impact on the operation. This paper reports an investigation into power supply interruption and malicious power generation attacks focusing on process and network vulnerabilities. The investigation was conducted in two steps: First, a vulnerability assessment was conducted on a fully operational electric power testbed. Next, the vulnerabilities discovered were exploited to perform different types of power supply interruption attacks and malicious power generation attacks. The attacks were executed using control code modification and SMA, a PV converter manufacturer, portal manipulation. The attacks reported here are useful for researchers and smart-grid operators to design and develop effective protection, detection, and response mechanisms.
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Footnotes
1
Malicious power generation can subsequently lead to accelerated aging and hence possible power supply interruption. Hence, we have considered it as a stealthy way of achieving power supply interruption.
 
5
Generic Object Oriented Substation Events.
 
6
Manufacturing Message Specification.
 
7
CoDeSys is a development environment for programming controllers such as WAGO PLCs.
 
8
The proportion of power sharing could be different, i.e., 60-40, but the logic remains unchanged.
 
9
Synchronization is carried out for incoming generators to ensure that the voltage, frequency, and phase angle of the incoming generator are same as those of the existing generators.
 
10
An inverse relationship exists between the percentage of overload and tripping time, i.e., the higher the overload, the shorter will be the tripping time.
 
11
We did not increase the speed owing to safety concerns; the attack was executed in reverse logic.
 
12
Synchronization is carried out for incoming generators to ensure that the voltage, frequency, and phase angle of the incoming generators are the same as the existing generators.
 
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Metadata
Title
Attacks on smart grid: power supply interruption and malicious power generation
Authors
Sridhar Adepu
Nandha Kumar Kandasamy
Jianying Zhou
Aditya Mathur
Publication date
04-07-2019
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
International Journal of Information Security / Issue 2/2020
Print ISSN: 1615-5262
Electronic ISSN: 1615-5270
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-019-00452-z

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