Attack modeling for Electric Power Information Networks

Abstract

Electric Power Information Networks are the infrastructure, which not only ensures electric power system operating securely as well as stably, but also promotes power companies'effective and continuable run. Electric power dispatch systems, management information systems, customer relation systems and so on, are all built on this infrastructure. It is an important task for network administrators of electric power industry to monitor, control and manage electric power information networks. Through installing safeguards, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems and anti-virus systems, the reliability of Electric Power Information Networks has been improved to a certain extent. However, threats also exist due to the loss of comprehensive understanding about network vulnerability. System methods should be employed to the vulnerability research of electric power information networks. Modeling Electric Power Information Network vulnerability and finding network flaws become more and more critical. A network intruder will take a series of actions to achieve a certain goal, and each action will change the state of a network. Thereby attack trees can be used to model the vulnerability of a network. An attack tree can be viewed as a directed tree where vertices represent network states and edges represent actions that lead state transitions. Root vertex is a certain goal. Any path from a leaf vertex to the root vertex is a whole attack pattern violating the security property of a network. A node of an attack tree can be decomposed as a set of attack sub-goals, either all of which must be achieved for the attack to succeed, or any one of which must be achieved for the attack to succeed. So there are two decomposition operations in an attack tree: AND and OR. Formal logic can be applied to attack analysis. Thus we can model attacks for network vulnerability analysis. This modeling method has two major advantages. At first it can be used to analyze the flaws of a network and find unknown flaws. Secondly network administrators use it to handle flaws rationally under the limits of the finite resources. Electric power information networks are generally made up of production control networks, enterprise management networks and external networks. They are connected and form a complex network. It is necessary to comprehend and analyze its vulnerability. An information network of an electric power plant is illustrated, and attack modeling is used to analyze its vulnerability. Industry control computers can manipulate electric devices. It is vital to guarantee industry control computers. Hence the goal is set to obtain the administrator right of an industry control computer. An attack tree is constructed tolocate the flaws of the network. Some advices to network security administrators are given. It is an attempt to formulate the security administration of electric power information networks using attack trees. Faulty Tree Method (FTM) has been used to analysis the reliability of power systems. Attack tree can help integrate the reliability analysis of the hybrid system consisting of an electric power system and an electric power information network system.