Denial-of-Service Attacks Pre-Emptive and Detection Framework for Synchrophasor Based Wide Area Protection Applications

Abstract

Synchrophasor technology has been very effective in addressing complex protection problems. Based on the experimental study of the impact of denial-of-service (DoS) cyberattacks on synchrophasor-assisted protection scheme, “adaptive dependability/security bias protection scheme,” a DoS pre-emptive and detection framework is presented in this article. The suggested structure helps in the identification of different types of DoS attacks (targeting data availability) and address resolution protocol (ARP) spoofing (compromising data confidentiality) via unique fingerprints developed using Wireshark network data. Redundant PDC datastream and random data path selector module (RDPS) in the framework help reduce the probability of a successful DoS attack. However, during a successful attack, the framework ensures that a healthy PDC datastream is used by the end application. The proposed methodology's efficacy has been verified using a western system coordinating council 9 bus, and IEEE 39 bus test systems on the real-time digital simulator (RTDS) based cyberphysical wide area measurement system testbed with industrial standard hardware phasor measurement units (PMUs). The results show that the proposed framework can effectively improve the performance of the synchrophasor-based adaptive dependability/security bias scheme during DoS attacks and avoid maloperation of the protective devices, which enhances the power system's stability.