Hassan El Ghazi

Zakaria El Mrabet, Hassan El Ghazi, Naima Kaabouch

Smart grid is an emerging and promising technology. It uses the power of information technologies to deliver intelligently the electrical power to customers, and it allows the integration of the green technology to meet the environmental requirements. Unfortunately, information technologies have its inherent vulnerabilities and weaknesses that expose the smart grid to a wide variety of security risks. The Intrusion detection system (IDS) plays an important role in securing smart grid networks and detecting malicious activity, yet it suffers from several limitations. Many research papers have been published to address these issues using several algorithms and techniques. Therefore, a detailed comparison between these algorithms is needed. This paper presents an overview of four data mining algorithms used by IDS in Smart Grid. An evaluation of performance of these algorithms is conducted based on several metrics including the probability of detection, probability of false alarm, probability of miss detection, efficiency, and processing time. Results show that Random Forest outperforms the other three algorithms in detecting attacks with higher probability of detection, lower probability of false alarm, lower probability of miss detection, and higher accuracy.

Zakaria El Mrabet, Youness Arjoune, Hassan El Ghazi et al.

Cognitive radio technology addresses the problem of spectrum scarcity by allowing secondary users to use the vacant spectrum bands without causing interference to the primary users. However, several attacks could disturb the normal functioning of the cognitive radio network. Primary user emulation attacks are one of the most severe attacks in which a malicious user emulates the primary user signal characteristics to either prevent other legitimate secondary users from accessing the idle channels or causing harmful interference to the primary users. There are several proposed approaches to detect the primary user emulation attackers. However, most of these techniques assume that the primary user location is fixed, which does not make them valid when the primary user is mobile. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on the Kalman filter framework for detecting the primary user emulation attacks with a non-stationary primary user. Several experiments have been conducted and the advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through the simulation results.

Zakaria El Mrabet, Hamid El Ghazi, Tayeb Sadiki et al.

Cloud computing is a new model of computing which provides scalability, flexibility and on-demand service. Virtualization is one of the main components of the cloud, but unfortunately, this technology suffers from many security vulnerabilities. The main purpose of this paper is to present a new secure architecture of Virtual Network machines in order to increase security among virtual machines in a virtualized environment (Xen as a case study). First, we expose the different network modes based on Xen Hypervisor, and then we analyze vulnerabilities and security issues within this kind of environment. Finally, we present in details new secure architecture and demonstrate how it can face the main security network attacks.

Zakaria El Mrabet, Hassan El Ghazi, Naima Kaabouch et al.

Smart grid uses the power of information technology to intelligently deliver energy to customers by using a two-way communication, and wisely meet the environmental requirements by facilitating the integration of green technologies. Although smart grid addresses several problems of the traditional grid, it faces a number of security challenges. Because communication has been incorporated into the electrical power with its inherent weaknesses, it has exposed the system to numerous risks. Several research papers have discussed these problems. However, most of them classified attacks based on confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and they excluded attacks which compromise other security criteria such as accountability. In addition, the existed security countermeasures focus on countering some specific attacks or protecting some specific components, but there is no global approach which combines these solutions to secure the entire system. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the relevant published works. First, we review the security requirements. Then, we investigate in depth a number of important cyber-attacks in smart grid to diagnose the potential vulnerabilities along with their impact. In addition, we proposed a cyber security strategy as a solution to address breaches, counter attacks, and deploy appropriate countermeasures. Finally, we provide some future research directions.