Cyber Attacks on Protective Relays in Digital Substations and Impact Analysis

Cyber Attacks on Protective Relays in Digital Substations and Impact Analysis

Subramaniam Rajkumar, Vetrivel (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
Tealane, M. (Talinn University of Technology)
Stefanov, Alexandru (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
Palensky, P. (TU Delft Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)

2020

Power systems automation and communication standards are crucial for the transition of the conventional power system towards a smart grid. The IEC 61850 standard is widely used for substation automation and protection. It enables real-time communication and data exchange between critical substation automation devices. IEC 61850 serves as the foundation for open communication and data exchange for digital substations of the smart grid. However, IEC 61850 has cyber security vulnerabilities that can be exploited with a man-in-the-middle attack. Such coordinated cyber attacks against the protection system in digital substations can disconnect generation and transmission lines, causing cascading failures. In this paper, we demonstrate a cyber attack involving the Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) protocol of IEC 61850. This is achieved by exploiting the cyber security vulnerabilities in the protocol and injecting spoofed GOOSE data frames into the substation communication network at the bay level. The cyber attack leads to tripping of multiple protective relays in the power grid, eventually resulting in a blackout. The attack model and impact on system dynamics are verified experimentally through hardware-in-the-loop simulations using commercial relays and Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS).

cyber-physical systems
IEC 61850
cyber security
cascading failures
Cyber attacks
cyber attacks

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9c42eb78-da12-4818-bda4-5ec390cd562a

https://doi.org/10.1109/MSCPES49613.2020.9133698

IEEE

2021-12-22

978-1-7281-8721-1

8th Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, MSCPES 2020 - Proceedings

8th Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, 2020-04-21, Virtual Workshop

8th Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, MSCPES 2020 - Proceedings

Virtual Workshop Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2020 Vetrivel Subramaniam Rajkumar, M. Tealane, Alexandru Stefanov, P. Palensky