Short-term risk assessment of botnet attacks on advanced metering infrastructure

Abstract

An ongoing evolution of the power grids into more intelligent and sophisticated ones has been taking place since the beginning of the 21st century. The underlying objective of the power systems is to deliver electrical energy with high-security standards, i.e. to supply power to the consumers uninterruptedly. However, the integration of information technology into the smart grid introduces new vulnerabilities related to cyber-security which the authors should address extensively. This study discusses the impact of coordinated cyber-attacks on the advanced metering infrastructure. In this work, emulations of distributed denial-of-service attacks in a closed testbed environment using a topology of smart meters that participate in an electricity market are being performed. This study proposes a method to evaluate the impact on the reliability of such attacks. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can serve as a tool for the evaluation of the short-term risk of botnet attacks during load shifting in smart distribution networks.

Keywords

• risk management
• invasive software
• smart meters
• smart power grids
• power system security
• computer network security
• power engineering computing
• power markets
• short-term risk assessment
• Botnet attacks
• advanced metering infrastructure
• power grids
• power systems
• electrical energy
• high-security standards
• information technology
• smart grid
• cyber-security
• distributed denial-of-service attacks
• smart meter topology
• electricity market
• smart distribution networks