A Characterisation of Smart Grid DoS Attacks
This work addresses cybersecurity vulnerabilities in smart grids, which are critical for modern power management, but it is incremental as it builds on existing research to propose a classification.
The paper tackles the problem of Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks in smart grids by identifying specific scenarios and analyzing them based on grid components, resulting in a novel target-based classification scheme and a qualitative analysis of the threat.
Traditional power grids are evolving to keep pace with the demands of the modern age. Smart grids contain integrated IT systems for better management and efficiency, but in doing so, also inherit a plethora of cyber-security threats and vulnerabilities. Denial-of-Service (DoS) is one such threat. At the same time, the smart grid has particular characteristics (e.g. minimal delay tolerance), which can influence the nature of threats and so require special consideration. In this paper, we identify a set of possible smart grid-specific DoS scenarios based on current research, and analyse them in the context of the grid components they target. Based on this, we propose a novel target-based classification scheme and further characterise each scenario by qualitatively exploring it in the context of the underlying grid infrastructure. This culminates in a smart grid-centric analysis of the threat to reveal the nature of DoS in this environment.