Power Injection Measurements are more Vulnerable to Data Integrity Attacks than Power Flow Measurements

TL;DR

This paper introduces the vulnerability index (VuIx), an information-theoretic metric to evaluate measurement susceptibility to data integrity attacks in power systems, revealing power injection measurements are more vulnerable than power flow measurements.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel vulnerability index (VuIx) based on information theory to quantify measurement vulnerability to data integrity attacks in power systems.

Findings

Power injection measurements are more vulnerable than power flow measurements.

The VuIx effectively ranks measurement vulnerability in IEEE test systems.

Numerical evaluations demonstrate the metric's practical applicability.

Abstract

A novel metric that describes the vulnerability of the measurements in power system to data integrity attacks is proposed. The new metric, coined vulnerability index (VuIx), leverages information theoretic measures to assess the attack effect on the fundamental limits of the disruption and detection tradeoff. The result of computing the VuIx of the measurements in the system yields an ordering of the measurements vulnerability based on the level of exposure to data integrity attacks. This new framework is used to assess the measurements vulnerability of IEEE test systems and it is observed that power injection measurements are overwhelmingly more vulnerable to data integrity attacks than power flow measurements. A detailed numerical evaluation of the VuIx values for IEEE test systems is provided.