Analysis of False Data Injection Attacks Against Automated Control for Parallel Generators in IEC 61850-Based Smart Grid Systems

With the introduction of advanced monitoring and communication technologies, the legacy power system is evolving toward fully digitalized smart grid. The IEC 61850 standards have emerged as popular standards for automation of the power grid systems. However, modernization of the power grid has an unintended consequence of increased vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Among the emerging cyber threats, in this article we focus on false data injection attacks against generators in IEC 61850 compliant systems since this subject is not yet intensively studied in literature. We conduct the study on attack vectors against automated control logic for parallel generators and their feasibility, and conduct simulation experiments to demonstrate the attack impact. Based on the identified attack vectors, we further propose an efficient message authentication scheme. We investigate real-world control logic taken from the state-of-the-art smart grid test-bed for enumerating attack vectors. We further create virtual test-bed that is fully compliant to IEC 61850 standards for simulation study. The proposed message authentication schemes are implemented and intensively evaluated to demonstrate advantages over the other schemes. While effectively countering the identified attack vectors, the proposed message authentication scheme improves the latency by 16% compared to the scheme recommended in IEC 62351 standards.