Vulnerability Identification and Remediation of FDI Attacks in Islanded DC Microgrids Using Multiagent Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

This article proposes a novel approach to uncover deficiencies of the existing cyber-attack detection schemes and thereby to serve as a foundation for establishing more reliable cybersecure solutions, with particular application in dc microgrids. For this purpose, a multiagent deep reinforcement learning (RL)-based algorithm is proposed to automatically discover the vulnerable spots in the conventional index-based cyberattack detection schemes and automatically generate coordinated stealthy destabilizing false data injection (FDI) attacks on cyber-protected islanded dc microgrids. To enable a continuous action space for the trained RL agents and enhance the algorithm’s precision and convergence rate, deep deterministic policy gradient is incorporated. Using this approach, susceptibility of a state-of-the-art detection scheme to several different coordinated FDI attacks on the distributed communication links is identified. The proposed algorithm is also enhanced with a sniffing feature to enable maintaining the stealthy attacks even under the sudden disconnection of any of the compromised links. To address the discovered deficiencies within the index-based detection scheme, a complementary multiagent RL detection algorithm using deep <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$</tex-math></inline-formula> -network algorithm is integrated, which provides a more reliable overall identification performance. Taking into account the communication delays and load changes, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by the experimental tests.