A Cyber Topology Model for the Texas 2000 Synthetic Electric Power Grid

Wlazlo, Patrick; Price, Kevin P.; Veloz, Christian; Sahu, Abhijeet; Huang, Hao; Goulart, Ana; Davis, Katherine; Zounouz, Saman

doi:10.1109/iptcomm.2019.8921260

Cited by 21 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…RESLab is designed to reflect realistic power and cyber components based on the synthetic electric grid model on the Texas footprint [33], and its communication model is introduced in [34]. Figure 1 presents a high-level view of the architecture considered, showing an example of one substation and one utility control centre (UCC), with components and data flows.…”

Section: Resilient Energy Systems Lab Cyber-physical Testbed Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In our experiments, PWDS simulates the power system in a real-time environment in which cyber threats and defence mechanisms are implemented. The large-scale test case on the Texas footprint [33,34] is implemented as our exemplar power system and maintained at Texas A&M. CORE's WAN is used to forward the breaker status and control commands between VMs.…”

Section: Power System Simulation: Power World Simulator and Dynamic Studiomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This section presents evaluation in RESLab of four use cases targeting operational impacts that affect power system resilience through large-scale grid emulation in RESLab. The synthetic Texas 2000-bus case [33,34] that we use is a publicly available power system case. This system is N-1 secure, and it is also difficult to cause disruption by exploring N-2 contingencies.…”

Section: Testbed Evaluation Of Cyberattack Impacts On Power System Operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Design and evaluation of a cyber‐physical testbed for improving attack resilience of power systems

Sahu

Wlazlo

Mao

et al. 2021

IET Cyber-Phy Sys Theory & Ap

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A power system is a complex cyber-physical system whose security is critical to its function. A major challenge is to model, analyse and visualise the communication backbone of the power systems concerning cyber threats. To achieve this, the design and evaluation of a cyber-physical power system (CPPS) testbed called Resilient Energy Systems Lab (RESLab) are presented to capture realistic cyber, physical, and protection system features. RESLab is architected to be a fundamental platform for studying and improving the resilience of complex CPPS to cyber threats. The cyber network is emulated using Common Open Research Emulator (CORE), which acts as a gateway for the physical and protection devices to communicate. The physical grid is simulated in the dynamic time frame using Power World Dynamic Studio (PWDS). The protection components are modelled with both PWDS and physical devices including the SEL Real-Time Automation Controller (RTAC). Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) is used to monitor and control the grid. Then, the design is exemplified and the tools are validated. This work presents four case studies on cyberattack and defence using RESLab, where we demonstrate false data and command injection using Man-in-the-Middle and Denial of Service attacks and validate them on a large-scale synthetic electric grid.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Section: Resilient Energy Systems Lab Cyber-physical Testbed Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Power System Simulation: Power World Simulator and Dynamic Studiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Testbed Evaluation Of Cyberattack Impacts On Power System Operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Design and evaluation of a cyber‐physical testbed for improving attack resilience of power systems

Sahu

Wlazlo

Mao

et al. 2021

IET Cyber-Phy Sys Theory & Ap

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“…To complement these previous works, our contribution is to investigate MiTM threat scenarios in detail and how intercepted DNP3 packets can cause failures to the physical system. Using our own libraries to emulate the attacks, we implement and analyze use case scenarios in a CPS testbed that simulates a large scale synthetic electric grid based on the Texas footprint [19], [20], where the attacker's stealthiness and its impact on five and ten simulated substations is evaluated. Such evaluations play a major role in exploring the threat space and proposing detection mechanisms.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Man-in-The-Middle Attacks and Defense in a Power System Cyber-Physical Testbed

Wlazlo,

Sahu,

Mao

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) attacks present numerous threats to a smart grid. In a MiTM attack, an intruder embeds itself within a conversation between two devices to either eavesdrop or impersonate one of the devices, making it appear to be a normal exchange of information. Thus, the intruder can perform false data injection (FDI) and false command injection (FCI) attacks that can compromise power system operations, such as state estimation, economic dispatch, and automatic generation control (AGC). Very few researchers have focused on MiTM methods that are difficult to detect within a smart grid. To address this, we are designing and implementing multi-stage MiTM intrusions in an emulation-based cyber-physical power system testbed against a large-scale synthetic grid model to demonstrate how such attacks can cause physical contingencies such as misguided operation and false measurements. MiTM intrusions create FCI, FDI, and replay attacks in this synthetic power grid. This work enables stakeholders to defend against these stealthy attacks, and we present detection mechanisms that are developed using multiple alerts from intrusion detection systems and network monitoring tools. Our contribution will enable other smart grid security researchers and industry to develop further detection mechanisms for inconspicuous MiTM attacks.

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“…To provide cyber-physical situational awareness, a map is needed, to help stakeholders understand the system. The map includes the power system topology, the cyber network topology, and the part in between, where they intersect [2], [3]: A cyber topology of the control network protects and thus affects grid operational reliability; it encompasses control center and substation networks. A power topology is how cyber-physical interactions map to physical impact; topology and state are essential to quantifying impacts.…”

Section: Cyber-physical Resilience Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Energy Management System Approach for Power System Cyber-Physical Resilience

Davis¹

2021

Preprint

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Power systems are large scale cyber-physical critical infrastructure that form the basis of modern society. The reliability and resilience of the grid is dependent on the correct functioning of related subsystems, including computing, communications, and control. The integration is widespread and has a profound impact on the operation, reliability, and efficiency of the grid. Technologies comprising these infrastructure can expose new sources of threats. Mapping these threats to their grid resilience impacts to stop them early requires a timely and detailed view of the entire cyber-physical system. Grid resilience must therefore be seen and addressed as a cyber-physical systems problem. This short position paper presents several key preliminaries, supported with evidence from experience, to enable cyberphysical situational awareness and intrusion response through a cyber-physical energy management system.

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A Cyber Topology Model for the Texas 2000 Synthetic Electric Power Grid

Cited by 21 publications

References 16 publications

Design and evaluation of a cyber‐physical testbed for improving attack resilience of power systems

Design and evaluation of a cyber‐physical testbed for improving attack resilience of power systems

Man-in-The-Middle Attacks and Defense in a Power System Cyber-Physical Testbed

An Energy Management System Approach for Power System Cyber-Physical Resilience

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