research-article

Coordinated variable structure switching in smart power systems: attacks and mitigation

Authors:

Shan Liu,

Deepa Kundur,

Takis Zourntos,

Karen Butler-PurryAuthors Info & Claims

HiCoNS '12: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on High Confidence Networked Systems

Pages 21 - 30

https://doi.org/10.1145/2185505.2185509

Published: 17 April 2012 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Recently, a class of cyber-physical attacks termed coordinated variable structure switching attacks has been identified for future smart grid systems. Here, an attacker who has remotely gained access to a circuit breaker or switch is able to disrupt power system operation by applying a state-dependent switching sequence. The sequence can be effectively designed employing variable structure systems theory. In this work, we extend this research to demonstrate an approach to mitigation within this variable structure system framework. Specifically, we study strategies employed by a power system operator in the face of a switching attack to steer the system to a stable equilibrium through persistent co-switching and by leveraging the existence of a stable sliding mode. We demonstrate how such co-switching can be designed for a variant of the WECC 3-machine, 9-bus system using linearized models and then employ simulations in MATLAB/Simulink and PSCAD to demonstrate its potential in practice.

References

[1]

R. A. Decarlo, S. H. Zak, and G. P. Matthews. Variable structure control of nonlinear multivariable systems: A tutorial. Proceedings of the IEEE, 76(3):212--232, 1988.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[2]

S. Liu, X. Feng, D. Kundur, T. Zourntos, and K. Butler-Purry. A class of cyber-physical switching attacks for power system disruption. In Proc. 7th Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research Workshop, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, October 2011.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

S. Liu, X. Feng, D. Kundur, T. Zourntos, and K. L. Butler-Purry. Switched system models for coordinated cyber-physical attack construction and simulation. In Proc. Second IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm), Brussels, Belgium, October 2011.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[4]

S. Liu, S. Mashayekh, D. Kundur, T. Zourntos, and K. Butler-Purry. A smart grid vulnerability analysis framework for coordinated variable structure switching attacks. In Proc. IEEE Power Engineering Society General Meeting, page under review, 2012.

Google Scholar

[5]

P. W. Sauer and M. A. Pai. Power System Dynamics and Stability. Stipes Publishing Co., 2007.

Google Scholar

[6]

Z. Sun and S. S. Ge. Switched Linear Systems: Control and Design. Springer-Verlag, London, 2005.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Feng YHuang RZhao WYin PLi Y(2025)A survey on coordinated attacks against cyber–physical power systems: Attack, detection, and defense methodsElectric Power Systems Research10.1016/j.epsr.2024.111286241(111286)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2024.111286
Arena GChub ALukianov MStrzelecki RVinnikov DDe Carne G(2024)A Comprehensive Review on DC Fast Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles: Standards, Power Conversion Technologies, Architectures, Energy Management, and CybersecurityIEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics10.1109/OJPEL.2024.34669365(1573-1611)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/OJPEL.2024.3466936
Yadav SKishor NPurwar SRaussi PChakrabarti S(2024)Switching attack modeling and vulnerability analysis of generator for dynamics studySustainable Energy, Grids and Networks10.1016/j.segan.2024.10129738(101297)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.segan.2024.101297
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Coordinated variable structure switching in smart power systems: attacks and mitigation
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Modeling and simulation
    1. Model development and analysis
      1. Modeling methodologies
2. Mathematics of computing
  1. Mathematical analysis
    1. Differential equations
      1. Ordinary differential equations

Recommendations

A multi-layered and kill-chain based security analysis framework for cyber-physical systems

This paper introduces a novel framework for understanding cyber attacks and the related risks to cyber-physical systems. The framework consists of two elements, a three-layered logical model and reference architecture for cyber-physical systems, and a ...
Towards Fast and Semi-supervised Identification of Smart Meters Launching Data Falsification Attacks
ASIACCS '18: Proceedings of the 2018 on Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Compromised smart meters sending false power consumption data in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) may have drastic consequences on the smart grid»s operation. Most existing defense models only deal with electricity theft from individual customers (...
A Formal Approach to Physics-based Attacks in Cyber-physical Systems

We apply formal methods to lay and streamline theoretical foundations to reason about Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and physics-based attacks, i.e., attacks targeting physical devices. We focus on a formal treatment of both integrity and denial of ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

HiCoNS '12: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on High Confidence Networked Systems

April 2012

96 pages

ISBN:9781450312639

DOI:10.1145/2185505

General Chairs:
S. Shankar Sastry
University of California, Berkeley, USA
,
Tamer Başar
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Saurabh Amin
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
,
Gabor Karsai
Vanderbilt University, USA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 April 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

HiCoNS '12

Sponsor:

SIGBED

HiCoNS '12: 1st International Conference on High Confidence Networked Systems

April 17 - 18, 2012

Beijing, China

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 30 of 55 submissions, 55%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

13
Total Citations
View Citations
235
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)5
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 19 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Feng YHuang RZhao WYin PLi Y(2025)A survey on coordinated attacks against cyber–physical power systems: Attack, detection, and defense methodsElectric Power Systems Research10.1016/j.epsr.2024.111286241(111286)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2024.111286
Arena GChub ALukianov MStrzelecki RVinnikov DDe Carne G(2024)A Comprehensive Review on DC Fast Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles: Standards, Power Conversion Technologies, Architectures, Energy Management, and CybersecurityIEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics10.1109/OJPEL.2024.34669365(1573-1611)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/OJPEL.2024.3466936
Yadav SKishor NPurwar SRaussi PChakrabarti S(2024)Switching attack modeling and vulnerability analysis of generator for dynamics studySustainable Energy, Grids and Networks10.1016/j.segan.2024.10129738(101297)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.segan.2024.101297
Yogi SBehera L(2019)A Control Strategy for the Prevention of Cyber-Physical Switching Attacks on Smart Grids2019 Sixth Indian Control Conference (ICC)10.1109/ICC47138.2019.9123186(455-460)Online publication date: Dec-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC47138.2019.9123186
Ghosh SAli M(2018)Impact of Crash Override and Tampering Communication Data Cyber-Attacks on the Power Quality of the Hybrid System2018 IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems (PEDES)10.1109/PEDES.2018.8707629(1-5)Online publication date: Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/PEDES.2018.8707629
Farraj AHammad EDaoud AKundur D(2016)A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Cyber Switching Attacks and Mitigation in Smart Grid SystemsIEEE Transactions on Smart Grid10.1109/TSG.2015.24400957:4(1846-1855)Online publication date: Jul-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2015.2440095
Karbouj HMaity S(2016)On using TCBR against cyber switching attacks on smart grids2016 IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT-Asia)10.1109/ISGT-Asia.2016.7796464(665-669)Online publication date: Nov-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISGT-Asia.2016.7796464
Farraj AKundur D(2015)On using energy storage systems in switching attacks that destabilize smart grid systems2015 IEEE Power & Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT)10.1109/ISGT.2015.7131855(1-5)Online publication date: Feb-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISGT.2015.7131855
Liu SChen BZourntos TKundur DButler-Purry K(2014)A Coordinated Multi-Switch Attack for Cascading Failures in Smart GridIEEE Transactions on Smart Grid10.1109/TSG.2014.23024765:3(1183-1195)Online publication date: May-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2014.2302476
Farraj AHammad EDaoud AKundur D(2014)A game-theoretic control approach to mitigate cyber switching attacks in Smart Grid systems2014 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm)10.1109/SmartGridComm.2014.7007772(958-963)Online publication date: Nov-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/SmartGridComm.2014.7007772
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

A multi-layered and kill-chain based security analysis framework for cyber-physical systems

Towards Fast and Semi-supervised Identification of Smart Meters Launching Data Falsification Attacks

A Formal Approach to Physics-based Attacks in Cyber-physical Systems