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Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid

  • 2026
  • Book
Authors
Ruilong Deng
Zhenyong Zhang
Mengxiang Liu
Peng Cheng
Book Series
Wireless Networks
Publisher
Springer Nature Switzerland
Part of
Springer Professional "Business + Economics & Engineering + Technology"
Springer Professional "Engineering + Technology"
Springer Professional "Business + Economics"
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About this book

Low-carbon goals, energy crisis, and increasing electricity demand lead to the integration of advanced electronic and communication devices into the smart grid to enable environmental-friendly, real-time, and economic operation and control. However, the vulnerabilities exposed in the IP-based devices and communication networks make the smart grid prone to cyberattacks. For example, the false data injection attack is one of the critical cyberattacks that threatens the system operations such as state estimation, voltage control, economic dispatch, and etc. Observing that the design of cyberattacks on the smart grid depends on the attacker's knowledge of certain key parameters such as the grid topology and line configurations, an innovative defensive mechanism is to proactively perturb these key parameters to prevent the attacker from knowing this related information for constructing cyberattacks. This proactive perturbation strategy is termed as moving target defense (MTD), which mitigates this risk by dynamically altering the power line reactance, making it harder for adversaries to construct effective cyberattacks. Unlike static countermeasures, MTD enhances smart grid cybersecurity by continuously reshaping the attack surface. Since MTD increases the system uncertainty and complexity of the smart grid, the opportunity for the attacker to successfully launch cyberattacks is reduced.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical foundations of MTD, the optimal deployment of this defense strategy, and the deep impact of MTD on the system’s operation and control. To begin with, a thorough literature review is conducted to summarize the cyber-, physical-, and cyber-physical coordinated MTD approaches. Then, a detailed theoretical analysis is provided to validate the effectiveness and completeness of MTD in terms of detecting and mitigating cyberattacks. Furthermore, the hiddenness of MTD is deeply analyzed from the attacker’s perspective, leading to the development of a coordinated defense framework to enhance the MTD’s hiddenness. Given the complexity resulted from the nonlinear AC state estimation, sensitivity-based approximation methods are proposed to quantify the effectiveness and hiddenness of MTD in AC power systems, forming the basis of an optimization framework to balance the MTD’s effectiveness between hiddenness. Finally, considering the proactive activities caused by MTD, its impact on the system’s operation and control, including the operation cost, load frequency control, and small signal stability, is theoretically and numerically analyzed. This book concludes by discussing future research directions and practical strategies for deploying MTD. The presented MTD design and the corresponding research results covered in this book will provide valuable insights for practical MTD deployment and motivate new ideas for strengthening smart grid cybersecurity.

This book will be valuable for researchers, graduate students, and industry professionals seeking a comprehensive understanding of the latest developments in MTD for smart grid cybersecurity. Designed for readers with a background in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Telecommunications, Computer Science, or related disciplines, it provides the necessary foundation to explore advanced defense strategies. The primary audiences include college students specializing in smart grid, Internet of Things, and cybersecurity, as well as researchers, consultants, and executives involved in smart grid cybersecurity and cyber-physical systems. Additionally, the book will be useful for standardization task forces developing advanced defense strategies. Beyond individual readers, institutions such as power utilities, cybersecurity firms, universities, and research organizations will find it a valuable resource for advancing knowledge and practical applications in smart grid cybersecurity.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
1. Introduction
Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of cybersecurity issues within smart grids and introduces the emerging MTD scheme, which counteracts malicious threats by proactively altering power line parameters. In addition, it thoroughly examines existing research gaps, challenges, and the objectives of this monograph.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
2. Literature Review of Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid
Abstract
This chapter presents the literature review of MTD applications in the smart grid. Aligning with the cyber-physical architecture of smart grid, the related MTD applications are classified into the cyber- and physical-based ones. These MTD strategies aim to strategically perturb the cyber or physical components to alert the attack surfaces, thus confusing the attackers and eventually enhancing the prevention and detection capability.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
3. Design of Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid
Abstract
In this chapter, we prove that, an MTD has the capability to thwart all FDI attacks constructed with former branch susceptances only if (i) the number of branches l in the power system is not less than twice that of the system states n (i.e., \(l \ge 2n\), where \(n + 1\) is the number of buses); (ii) the susceptances of more than n branches, which cover all buses, are perturbed. Moreover, we prove that the state variable of a bus that is only connected by a single branch (no matter it is perturbed or not) can always be modified by the attacker. Nevertheless, in order to reduce the attack opportunities of potential attackers, we first exploit the impact of the susceptance perturbation magnitude on the dimension of the stealthy attack space, in which the attack vector is constructed with former branch susceptances. Then, we propose that, by perturbing an appropriate set of branches, we can minimize the dimension of the stealthy attack space and maximize the number of covered buses. Besides, we consider the increasing operation cost caused by the activation of MTD. Finally, we conduct extensive simulations to validate our findings with IEEE standard test power systems.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
4. On Hiddenness of Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid
Abstract
To hide the activation of MTD from attackers, a new strategy named hidden MTD has been proposed by the latest literature. A hidden MTD can increase the defender’s chance to detect FDI attacks and avoid the attacker from inferring new branch parameters. However, by using an MTD-confirming detector like the BDD checker in SE, we observe that it is still possible for the attacker to detect this hidden MTD when the power flows change with time. To uncover the insight of MTD’s hiddenness, we study the conditions needed for achieving a hidable MTD. We find that the hiddenness of MTD is closely related to the branch perturbations, system topology, and attacker’s knowledge. From the attacker’s perspective, we prove that an MTD can be detected by the attacker only if he/she knows the previous parameters of a set of branches that forms a circle and the measurements corresponding to those branches after MTD. But once the attacker has full knowledge of branch parameters before MTD and has obtained all measurements after MTD, it is proved that we can never achieve a hidable and effective MTD. From the defender’s perspective, since it is impossible to know the attacker’s capability, we cannot determine whether a constructed MTD is hidable or not by purely depending on the MTD design. To address this issue, we propose that, by protecting a basic set of measurements, we still can achieve a hidable and effective MTD regardless of the changes of power flows, the attacker’s knowledge, and the branch perturbations. Furthermore, we validate our findings with the IEEE standard test power systems.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
5. Explicit Analysis of Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid
Abstract
In this chapter, we attempt to conduct an explicit analysis on the MTD performance in AC power systems. First, we derive explicit approximations of measurement residuals to quantify the two metrics. Then, based on the projection matrix, maximizing the effectiveness is transformed to maximizing the lower bound of the approximated residual, under which the matrix inverse issue is addressed. Moreover, the maximization of hiddenness is achieved by the minimization of the approximated power flow difference caused by reactance perturbation. To balance the trade-off between effectiveness and hiddenness, the design of EXR-MTD is accomplished by aggregating the two sub-problems with an appropriate weight. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted to validate the performance of EXR-MTD. Numerical results indicate that EXR-MTD performs better than existing MTD strategies in terms of hiddenness, while the effectiveness of EXR-MTD is comparable to those of existing MTD strategies.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
6. Impact Analysis of Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid
Abstract
MTD is a promising approach to defend against load redistribution attacks on the IoT-based smart grid networks by probing the distorted state estimates with the distributed flexible AC transmission system. However, existing studies mainly focus on optimizing the performance of MTD and ignore the safety effect of it on the system’s operation. In this chapter, we fill this gap by deeply analyzing the effect of MTD on the small signal stability and aim to alleviate the negative impact and guarantee its defending performance simultaneously. Firstly, the stability is formally described using the eigenvalue sensitivity. The relationship between the MTDper and the stability criteria is derived. Secondly, a new indicator is proposed to measure the effectiveness of MTDper. Thirdly, a constrained optimization problem is formulated to compute the bound of MTDper for guaranteeing the small signal stability. In addition, a surprising finding is that the stability margin can be improved and enhanced by optimizing the value of MTDper without losing the MTD’s effectiveness. Finally, we evaluate the performance of MTDper and its impact on the small signal stability with extensive simulations on the IEEE 30-bus, 39-bus, and 68-bus test power systems.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
7. Summary and Future Directions
Abstract
In this chapter, we first summarize the main content, including algorithm design, analytical results, experimental results, and practical insights, presented in this monograph on MTD in the smart grid. We then highlight future research directions for developing more effective and practical MTD strategies to ensure the security and resilience of the smart grid.
Ruilong Deng, Zhenyong Zhang, Mengxiang Liu, Peng Cheng
Title
Moving Target Defense in the Smart Grid
Authors
Ruilong Deng
Zhenyong Zhang
Mengxiang Liu
Peng Cheng
Copyright Year
2026
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-92378-4
Print ISBN
978-3-031-92377-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-92378-4

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