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

• DOI: 10.1007/s10207-019-00452-z
• Publication Date: 2019-07-04T05:59:27Z
• Authors: Sridhar Adepu; Nandha Kumar Kand...; Jianying Zhou; Aditya Mathur
• Keywords: Blackout; Testbed; Vulnerability

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.