The smart grid provides efficient and cost-effective management of the electric energy grid by allowing real-time monitoring, coordinating, and controlling the system using communication networks between physical components. This inherent complexity significantly increases the vulnerabilities and attack surface in the smart grid due to misconfigurations or the lack of security hardening. Therefore, it is important to ensure a secure and resilient operation of the smart grid by proactive identification of potential threats, impact assessment, and cost-efficient mitigation planning. This paper aims to achieve these goals through the development of an efficient security framework for the Energy Management System (EMS), a core smart grid component. In this paper, we present a framework that combines formal analytic with PowerWorld simulator which verifies the solution model to investigate the feasibility of false data injection attacks against contingency analysis in the power grid. We evaluate the impact of such attacks by running experiments using synthetic data on the standard IEEE test cases.
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Security Vulnerabilities of Smart Meters in Smart Grid
Integration of complex and high-speed electronic components in the state of art electric power system enhances the need for improved security infrastructure and resilience against invasive and non-invasive attacks on the smart grid. A modern smart grid system integrates a variety of instruments and standards to achieve cost-effective and time-effective energy measurement and management. As the fundamental component in the smart grid, the smart meter supports real-time monitoring, automatic control, and high-speed communication along with power consumption recording. However, the wide use of smart meters also increases privacy and security concerns. In this paper, we demonstrate the vulnerability of side-channel attacks on secure communication in smart grids for software-based and hardware-based implementations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1814420
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10173302
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Security Vulnerabilities of Smart Meters in Smart Grid
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3018 to 3023
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2019.8926992
