A deep learning deviation-based scheme to defend against false data injection attacks in power distribution systems

Defending against false data injection attacks (FDIAs) in cyber-physical power systems is crucial. Detection in power distribution systems is complex due to load variations, uncertainties, and fewer meters. Defense strategies include model-driven and data-driven approaches, but model-based methods can trigger false alarms due to threshold setting issues. The current research proposes a novel data-driven method to address threshold setting issues in detecting and localizing FDIAs in power distribution systems. First, a dataset is created by recording estimated measurement values using an unscented Kalman filter and weighted least squares across various attack scenarios. These estimated measurements are then fed into a deep artificial neural network (ANN) for binary classification to detect attacks. The output, along with the estimated measurements, is used by another ANN to localize the corrupted meter zone. This deep learning-based approach improves threshold setting over the common chi-square method. Results show that the proposed deep learning method for FDIA detection and localization outperforms a recently proposed ensemble of shallow models. The area under the curve value increases by about 5% with lower training time. The approach is also effective against previously unseen attack strategies and different feeder topologies.