Semantic-Based Detection Architectures Against Monitoring-Control Attacks in Power Grids

The modernization of power grids is depending significantly on Information and Communication Technologies, which increases the vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Particularly, Monitoring-Control Attacks (MCA), attacks that manipulate control decisions by fabricating measurements in the feedback loop, are highly threatening. To defend against MCAs, we propose a semantic analysis framework to be implemented in complement to IDS by identifying the adversary’s intention using power grid contextual information. In addition, the framework identifies critical substations for planning protection. The proposed framework can be implemented in three architectures, namely, centralized, hierarchical, and distributed. The effectiveness of the proposed work is demonstrated on the New England IEEE 39 Bus system.