On the Monetary Loss Due to Passive and Active Attacks on MIMO Smart Grid Communications

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the monetary impact of passive and active security attacks on MIMO wireless smart grid communications, proposing methods to enhance security and reliability while quantifying associated costs.

Contribution

It introduces a MIMOME wiretap channel model and a redundant gateway design to improve security and reliability in smart grid communications.

Findings

Artificial noise mitigates passive eavesdropping effects.

Redundant gateways improve communication reliability.

Quantified energy-demand estimation-error costs.

Abstract

We consider multiple source nodes (consumers) communicating wirelessly their energy demands to the meter data-management system (MDMS) over the subarea gateway(s). We quantify the impacts of passive and active security attacks on the wireless communications system's reliability and security as well as the energy-demand estimation-error cost in dollars paid by the utility. We adopt a multiple-input multiple-output multi-antenna-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channel model. To secure the MIMO wireless communication system, the legitimate nodes generate artificial noise (AN) vectors to mitigate the effect of the passive eavesdropping attacks. In addition, we propose a redundant design where multiple gateways are assumed to coexist in each subarea to forward the consumers' energy-demand messages. We quantify the redundant designs impact on the communication reliability between the consumers and the MDMS and on the energy-demand estimation-error cost.