Cyber security analysis of state estimators in electric power systems

In this paper, we analyze the cyber security of state estimators in Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems operating in power grids. Safe and reliable operation of these critical infrastructure systems is a major concern in our society. In current state estimation algorithms there are bad data detection (BDD) schemes to detect random outliers in the measurement data. Such schemes are based on high measurement redundancy. Although such methods may detect a set of very basic cyber attacks, they may fail in the presence of a more intelligent attacker. We explore the latter by considering scenarios where deception attacks are performed, sending false information to the control center. Similar attacks have been studied before for linear state estimators, assuming the attacker has perfect model knowledge. Here we instead assume the attacker only possesses a perturbed model. Such a model may correspond to a partial model of the true system, or even an out-dated model. We cha...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: CDC
• Authors: André Teixeira, Saurabh Amin, Henrik Sandberg, Karl Henrik Johansson, Shankar S. Sastry
• Keywords: CDC 2010, Control Systems, Deception Attack, Model, State Estimators