Paper Reading on: Modeling Load Redistribution Attacks in Power Systems

This paper introduces a special type of false data injection attack, called load redistribution attacks, defined by the authors themselves. It is very similar to what I did as Deception Attack in CPS. However, it is also very specific to Smart Power Grid System, to affect the outcome of the state estimation and then further mislead the operation and control functions of Energy Management System. With some assumptions, this paper come up with a unique attack type, LR, increasing load at some buses and reducing loads at other buses while maintaining the total load unchanged. In this kind of attack, only load bus injection measurements and line power flow measurements are attackable. It can mislead the state estimation process without being detected by any of the existing techniques for bad data detection. (Not quite understand about this. It cannot be detected? Really?)

And then, the author quantitatively analyzed its damage to system operation using 6 different LR attack case. By increasing the magnitude of attack, the system operation cost is increased. From the damaging effect analysis, the author differentiate two attacking goals: immediate attacking goal and delayed attacking goal. This is a good selling point for this paper. Do a damage effect analysis using a bi-level model and a KKT-based method is used to identify the most damaging attack from an attacker's perspective. It is aiming to maximize the operation cost immediately after the attacks. The upper level represents the attacker, and the lower level represents the reactor, subject to some constraints that make it as LR attack.