Coordinated cyber-physical attack on power grids based on malicious power dispatch

Abstract

This paper proposes a new mode of cyber-physical attack based on injecting false commands, which poses an increasing risk to modern power systems as a typical example of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Such attacks can trigger physical attacks by driving the system into vulnerable states. To address the critical issues arising from this new mode, we define an inverse-community (IC) in power flow distribution and evaluate it using inverse-modularity. To identify the most vulnerable state of the IC that represents the inherent vulnerability of the system, we employ a full malicious power dispatch problem. We also analyze an example of the proposed mode, where a partial malicious power dispatch that maximizes inverse-modularity is combined with physical attacks aimed at disconnecting vulnerable IC boundary lines, making cascading failures highly likely. To demonstrate the potential impact of this coordinated cyber-physical attack, we use the IEEE-118 and IEEE-300 bus systems for simulation. The results show the effectiveness of this attack strategy and provide a new perspective to analyze cyber-physical security issues in modern power systems.