Engineering topics
Youssef, Tarek
Publications and source records attributed to Youssef, Tarek.
The IEC 61850 Sampled Measured Values Protocol: Analysis, Threat Identification, and Feasibility of Using NN Forecasters to Detect Spoofed Packets
The operation of the smart grid is anticipated to rely profoundly on distributed microprocessor-based control. Therefore, interoperability standards are needed to address the heterogeneous nature of the smart grid data. Since the IEC 61850 emerged as a wide-spread interoperability standard widely accepted by the industry, the Sampled Measured Values method has been used to communicate digitized voltage and current measurements. Realizing that current and voltage measurements (i.e., feedback measurements) are necessary for reliable and secure noperation of the power grid, firstly, this manuscript provides a detailed analysis of the Sampled Measured Values protocol emphasizing its advantages, then, it identifies vulnerabilities in this protocol and explains the cyber threats associated to these vulnerabilities. Secondly, current efforts to mitigate these vulnerabilities are outlined and the feasibility of using neural network forecasters to detect spoofed sampled values is investigated. It was shown that although such forecasters have high spoofed data detection accuracy, they are prone to the accumulation of forecasting error. Accordingly, this paper also proposes an algorithm to detect the accumulation of the forecasting error based on lightweight statistical indicators. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is experimentally verified in a laboratory-scale smart grid testbed.
Sequence Hopping Algorithm For Securing Goose Messages
Embodiments of the present invention include methods and apparatuses for securing data transfer in power-system automation and smart grids. Embodiments of the present invention can be particularly helpful in securing GOOSE messages. A method of securing data transfer according to an embodiment of the present invention can include a message sequence synchronization and monitoring server (MSSMS) providing random seeds to a publisher intelligent electronic device (IED) and a subscriber IED, both having a pseudo random number generators (PRNGs), inputting the random seeds into the PRNG of the publisher IED and generating a publisher sequence hopping number, sending a message to the subscriber IED with the publisher sequence hopping number attached, and determining if the message is valid by comparing the message attached publisher sequence hopping number to a subscriber sequence hopping number generated by the subscriber PRNG.