Co-simulation and Design of Cyber-Physically Secure Bulk Electric Power Grids

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to (1) develop algorithms that capture how bad data injection attacks propagate in a power delivery system (2) develop a tool that can model a bad command injection in bulk electric systems (3) develop a cyber-physical method and metric for quantifying the effect of a cyber-physical attack on bulk electric systems. We begin with a discussion motivating the shift from traditional IT cyber-security to the new paradigm of cyber-physical security and describe its characteristics. We develop a graph-based attack propagation model that simulates a bad data injection attack and executes a heuristic defense strategy using power system state estimation. Next, we develop a co-simulator that models and simulates both the power system and the communication in an integrated manner. This provides capability to analyze the overall cyber-physical security of the entire system by (1) characterizing system behavior under different attack scenarios (2) quantifying system cyber-physical security through cyber-physical security assessment (CPSA) metrics that provide insight into impact analysis of cyber-physical attacks on the system. We develop an attack model and a co-simulation framework for simulating the effects of a bad command injection on two bulk electric systems test cases. We also develop an enhanced visualization prototype for operator increased situation awareness of the cyber-physical security status of the BES. The results indicate that modeling and simulation (M&S) of cyber-physical security attacks holds promise as a way of studying and understanding how cyber-physical security attacks in bulk electric system affect system components and suggest the implementation of cyber-physical security assessment modules into existing control systems to manage such attacks when they occur on BES in the real world.