Unobservable False Data Injection Attacks against PMUs: Feasible Conditions and Multiplicative Attacks

TL;DR

This paper explores unobservable false data injection attacks on PMUs, identifying conditions for their feasibility and introducing multiplicative attacks that evade advanced detection methods, highlighting vulnerabilities in power system security.

Contribution

It introduces a class of multiplicative FDI attacks that maintain measurement matrix rank and evade both traditional and advanced detection techniques.

Findings

Multiplicative attacks can bypass enhanced BDD and low-rank detectors.

Unobservable attacks are feasible under specific conditions involving zero injection buses.

Simulation confirms attacks' effectiveness on IEEE RTS-24-bus system.

Abstract

This paper studies false data injection (FDI) attacks against phasor measurement units (PMUs). As compared to the conventional bad data detector (BDD), an enhanced BDD utilizing the effect of zero injection buses is proposed. Feasible conditions under which FDI attacks are unobservable to this enhanced BDD are discussed. In addition, a class of multiplicative FDI attacks that maintain the rank of the PMU measurement matrix is introduced. Simulation results on the IEEE RTS-24-bus system indicate that the these multiplicative unobservable attacks can avoid detection by both the enhanced BDD and a detector based on low-rank decomposition proposed in prior work.