Security Analysis of Smart Grid Data Collection Technologies

In the last few years we are witnessing a dramatic increase in cyber-attacks targeted against Critical Infrastructures. Attacks against Critical Infrastructures are especially dangerous because they are tailored to disrupt assets which are essential to the functioning of the society as a whole. Examples of Critical Infrastructure sectors include transportation, communication, and utilities. Among these, power grids are possibly the most critical, due to the strong dependency of virtually all Critical Infrastructures on the power infrastructure. We have conducted a security analysis of two key technologies which enable data collection in Power Grids, namely synchrophasor devices and Phasor Data Concentrators. We emphasize that the study has been conducted on a commercial synchrophasor produced by a major vendor, and on a widely used open source product for the Phasor Data Concentrator application. We describe the experimental setup, present the main results, and comment the findings of our research.