Construct data integrity attacks against real-time electrical market in Smart Grid

Abstract

The normal operation of real-time electrical market requires accurate state estimation in Smart Grid. However, recent research shows that strategically designed data integrity attacks can easily introduce errors into state estimation without being detected. From the perspective of attackers, this increases the chances of controlling real-time electrical market operations through manipulations of meter measurements. In this paper, we first reveal the intrinsic relations between data integrity attacks and real-time electrical market, and explicitly characterize their complex interactions as a process simulator. Then a simulation-based global optimization problem is formulated, from which an attacker could maximize financial incentives through constructed data integrity attacks. More importantly, we further consider the construction of data integrity attacks when power network topologies and parameters are unknown. A systematic construction strategy is proposed based on recursive least square subspace estimation. As far as we know, our paper is the first attempt to attack real-time electrical market without network information. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed attacking strategies through numerical simulations in IEEE test systems.