Cyber Attacks on Power Grids: Causes and Propagation of Cascading Failures

Cascading effects in the power grid involve an uncontrolled, successive failure of elements. The root cause of such failures is the combined occurrence of multiple, statistically rare events that may result in a blackout. With increasing digitalisation, power systems are vulnerable to emergent cyber threats. Furthermore, such threats are not...

Cyber Forensic Analysis for Operational Technology Using Graph-Based Deep Learning

The cyber attacks in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016 demonstrated the vulnerability of electrical power grids to cyber threats. They highlighted the significance of Operational Technology (OT) communication-based anomaly detection. Many anomaly detection methods are based on real-time traffic monitoring, i.e., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) that may...

Exploring Stability and Accuracy Limits of Distributed Real-Time Power System Simulations via System-of-Systems Cosimulation

Electromagnetic transients (EMT) is the most accurate, but computationally expensive method of analyzing power system phenomena. Thereby, interconnecting several real-time simulators can unlock scalability and system coverage, but leads to a number of new challenges, mainly in time synchronization, numerical stability, and accuracy...

Towards Real-Time Distinction of Power System Faults and Cyber Attacks

This paper presents a methodology to distinguish between three-phase faults and GOOSE cyber attacks, aimed at opening the circuit breakers in the power grid. We propose a scheme that utilizes Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU)-enabled monitoring of power grid states, and communication network packet logs in the substation. In this scheme, by...