Securing Smart Grid Communication Against False Data Injection Attacks

The world of cyber security continues to introduce new threats each year against network infrastructures and computer devices. In the recent years, the impact from cyber-attacks has wreaked havoc on many company brands and organizational reputations. As this issue grows so does the technology to prevent and protect against these malicious attacks. It is absolutely crucial for organizations and businesses to shift focus from defense for different types of attacks to improving safeguards to mitigate the loss of sensitive data when an attack occurs. In addition to the traditional security technology used to detect an attack, companies will have to include

Cyber-security demands are ever increasing in the field of Information Technology with the globalization of the internet. Disruptions due to cyber-attacks are affecting the economy, costing companies billions of dollars each year in lost revenue. To counter this problem

Accordingly, this document has been developed to provide information regarding DTL Power and the measures that have been developed and implemented to safeguard its information and information systems from a cyber threat. This document is broken down into several sections that will provide an analysis of DTL Power and the energy sector; as well as the effectiveness of cybersecurity technology/policies in the energy sector, the team’s cyber strategy, and budget.

In Western power grid attack, APT was well organized. They used both active and passive reconnaissance methods to gather information. We have found the traces of attackers IP in the network logs provided by Intelligence services. This tells us that attackers had used Active Reconnaissance to get network

Sophisticated hackers have expanded their threat matrix to include cyber-attacks on the computer systems used to operate the world’s pipelines. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (“SCADA”) systems are increasingly subject to targeted attacks. Cyber-attacks can be perpetrated over the Internet from anywhere in the world and are capable of disrupting safe pipeline operation causing spills, explosions, or fires. The 2008 explosion on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline in Turkey was reportedly caused by a cyber-attack.

Within the realm of open source information, a trove of resources are readily available delineating locations of individual power plants, major electrical lines, and sub stations serving the United States and Illinois. Most apparent is not necessarily the ease of access to information, but how piecing together the varied, disparate data can be used to create a picture that show location, connectivity, and potential vulnerabilities to national and state-level power grid.

The explosion of these new technologies, especially an Internet-like communications network, may introduce some new threats to the security of the smart grid. In the smart grid network there are three crucial aspects of security that may be threatened due to the CIA-triad. The CIA-triad comprises on three basic principles of security issues: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability [8]. These principles are illustrated in a triangle secure system in Figure 2. The three aspects of the CIA-triad are defined as follows.

The exponential increase use of the Internet to communicate, conduct business transactions, access personal banking, healthcare, education at confront of being anywhere has become an everyday lifestyle for many people around the globe. This reliance on computers, laptops, devices and other Internet of Things to access the Internet means, organizations, businesses and the government have also seen an increase occurrence of sophisticated attacks.

The vulnerabilities attacks in Critical Infrastructure can be very common; and attacks by hackers to this infrastructure can be deadly. There are 25 vulnerabilities have been identified in critical infrastructure. These are problematic in our society as these hackers are easy to gain infiltration and take control of the entire critical

There has been too much focus on protecting the power plants and other critical infrastructure systems from attacks on the Internet Protocol (IP) networks. However, it’s much easier to attack a power plant through serial communication devices. In addition, the APT could potentially hack into the wireless radio networks or use social engineering to gain physical access to the power plant.

Privacy threats are currently the biggest threat to National Security today. The threats are not only concerning to the government, however. An alarming 92% of Americans are concerned that the power grid may be vulnerable to a cyber-attack (Denholm). Although this is a more recent development to the cyber threats we have experienced, this is not the first time that privacy threats have stepped into the limelight as people are forced to watch their every online move.

In the next decade, complex and diverse security issues globally can result beyond which technology can easily handle. Possible threats that can be experienced are varied in nature changing from weapons, change in climate, use of winds and even internal attacks through liaising with wrong intent persons. The main challenge that can be encountered in solving these attacks

In 2013, a first of its kind global internet spam attack, took place. What differentiated this attack from a myriad of others, was an unexpectedly new, and surprising conspirator; smart appliances. Yes … smart TVs, smart coffeemakers, and smart refrigerators, were perpetrators in a first of its kind, cyber-attack. After investigations concluded, the security firm Proofpoint stated “About 25% of the messages seen by Proofpoint

The danger of cyber-attacks on power plants are something that needs to be looked at closely to avoid costly deadly incidents. Cybersecurity has become a vital component of our world today and it needs to evolve fast to keep up in its protection from the outside. Cybersecurity protects us from unauthorized shutdowns, break-ins, financial and social ruin. We live in a world that has become completely reliant on computers for everything. They are able to cause chaos and even shutdown “nuclear centrifuges, air defense systems, and electrical grids.” (Hathaway, Crootof, Levitiz, Nix, Nowlan, Perdue & Spiegel, 2012) Cyber-attacks are more common today due to the increase capability of technology. Important information along with every aspect of people’s lives are kept on computers or cell phones which are vulnerable at all times. An example of this would be the leaked snapchat photos of celebrities, stolen identities and unauthorized access from an outside computer into a power plant.

There are several different forms of cyber weapons, all of which can be used for either an attack or espionage. There are principally five common practices. The first of three attacks that will be examined is spoofing.