A game-theoretic approach for power systems defense against dynamic cyber-attacks

TitleA game-theoretic approach for power systems defense against dynamic cyber-attacks
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsHasan, S., A. Dubey, G. Karsai, and X. Koutsoukos
JournalInternational Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems
Volume115
Pagination105432
ISSN0142-0615
Abstract

Technological advancements in today’s electrical grids give rise to new vulnerabilities and increase the potential attack surface for cyber-attacks that can severely affect the resilience of the grid. Cyber-attacks are increasing both in number as well as sophistication and these attacks can be strategically organized in chronological order (dynamic attacks), where they can be instantiated at different time instants. The chronological order of attacks enables us to uncover those attack combinations that can cause severe system damage but this concept remained unexplored due to the lack of dynamic attack models. Motivated by the idea, we consider a game-theoretic approach to design a new attacker-defender model for power systems. Here, the attacker can strategically identify the chronological order in which the critical substations and their protection assemblies can be attacked in order to maximize the overall system damage. However, the defender can intelligently identify the critical substations to protect such that the system damage can be minimized. We apply the developed algorithms to the IEEE-39 and 57 bus systems with finite attacker/defender budgets. Our results show the effectiveness of these models in improving the system resilience under dynamic attacks.

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