False Data Injection Attacks against Low Voltage Distribution Systems

Abstract

The transformation of the conventional electrical grid into a digital ecosystem brings significant benefits, such as two-way communication between energy consumers and utilities, self-monitoring and pervasive controls. However, the advent of the smart electrical grid raises severe cybersecurity and privacy concerns, given the presence of legacy systems and communications protocols. This paper focuses on False Data Injection (FDI) cyberattacks against a low-voltage distribution system, taking full advantage of Man In The Middle (MITM) actions. The first cyberattack targets the communication between a smart meter and an Active Distribution Management System (ADMS), while the second FDI cyberattack targets the communication between a smart inverter and ADMS. In both cases, the cyberattacks affect the operation of the distribution transformer, thus resulting in devastating consequences. Moreover, this paper provides an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS), detecting and mitigating the above cyberattacks in a timely manner. The evaluation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed IDS.

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“…Insider attacks have been identified as one of the most dangerous cyber threats for critical infrastructures (CIs), as the attacker continues sending real and legitimate control commands to other network devices, it can lead to catastrophic damage to CIs. Insider attacks usually have a huge impact and greater success rate because it is difficult to predict when they want to attack and how they want to attack thereby making it unpreventable [21,[52][53][54] Other forms of threats are denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, which floods the systems, servers, or networks with unsolicited traffic to exhaust and interrupt network communication resources and bandwidth [20]; distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, where the attackers use multiple compromised devices to launch DoS attack and can bombard a central server with simultaneous data requests thereby disrupting the services; manin-the-middle (MitM) attacks, where the attackers deliberately insert themselves into a two-party communication interrupting the traffic flow, with the intention of data theft and false data injection attacks [20,55]; man-on-the-side (MotS) attacks allow an adversary to read and inject packets, but not modify packets sent by other hosts as in the case of MitM attacks [43]; and zero-day exploit attacks, which occur after a network vulnerability has been announced but before a patch or solution is implemented. Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are highly sophisticated threats that focus on the critical industrial sector.…”