False Data Injection Attack Against Power System Small-Signal Stability

TL;DR

This paper develops a formal method to synthesize false data injection attacks that can destabilize power system stability, highlighting the risks posed by intelligent attackers with limited measurement access.

Contribution

It introduces an optimization-based approach to generate FDI attack vectors targeting power system stability, considering attacker capabilities and system constraints.

Findings

Random FDI attacks are unlikely to destabilize the system.

Intelligent attackers can effectively destabilize the system with limited measurement access.

The proposed method successfully identifies potential destabilizing attack vectors.

Abstract

Small-Signal Stability (SSS) is crucial for the control of power grids. However, False Data Injection (FDI) attacks against SSS can impact the grid stability, hence, the security of SSS needs to be studied. This paper proposes a formal method of synthesizing FDI attack vectors (i.e., a set of measurements to be altered) that can destabilize power systems. We formulate an FDI attack as an optimization problem using AC power flow, SSS model, and stability constraints. The attacker capability is modeled as the accessibility to a limited set of measurements. The solution of the proposed FDI attack model provides a destabilizing attack vector if exists. We implement the proposed mechanism and evaluate its performance by conducting several case studies using the WSCC 3-machine 9-bus system. The case study results showed that the possibility of random FDIs (i.e., with no knowledge of the power system) in launching a destabilizing attack is too low to be successful. However, an intelligent attacker can leverage the grid knowledge to make the system unstable, even with limited access to the measurements.