EVADE: Targeted Adversarial False Data Injection Attacks for State Estimation in Smart Grid

Abstract

Although conventional false data injection attacks can circumvent the detection of bad data detection (BDD) in sustainable power grid cyber physical systems, they are easily detected by well-trained deep learning-based detectors. Still, state estimation models with deep leaning-based detectors are not secure due to the vulnerabilities and fragility of deep learning models. Using the related laws of conventional false data injection attacks and adversarial sample attacks, this paper proposes the targEted adVersarial fAlse Data injEction (EVADE) strategy to explore targeted adversarial false data injection attacks for state estimation in Smart Grid. The proposed EVADE attack strategy selects key state variables based on adversarial saliency maps to improve the attack efficiency and perturbs as few state variables as possible to reduce the attack cost. In this way, the EVADE attack strategy can bypass the detection of BDD and neural attack detection (NAD) methods (that is, maintaining deep stealthy) with a high success rate and achieve the attack target simultaneously. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, posing serious and pressing concerns for sustainable cyber physical power system security.