Analyzing resiliency of the smart grid communication architectures under cyber attack

Authors:
Anas AlMajali;Arun Viswanathan;Clifford Neuman
Affiliations:
USC, Information Sciences Institute;USC, Information Sciences Institute;USC, Information Sciences Institute
Venue:
CSET'12 Proceedings of the 5th USENIX conference on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test
Year:
2012

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Abstract

Smart grids are susceptible to cyber-attack as a result of new communication, control and computation techniques employed in the grid. In this paper, we characterize and analyze the resiliency of smart grid communication architecture, specifically an RF mesh based architecture, under cyber attacks. We analyze the resiliency of the communication architecture by studying the performance of high-level smart grid functions such as metering, and demand response which depend on communication. Disrupting the operation of these functions impacts the operational resiliency of the smart grid. Our analysis shows that it takes an attacker only a small fraction of meters to compromise the communication resiliency of the smart grid. We discuss the implications of our result to critical smart grid functions and to the overall security of the smart grid.