Random Delay Attack And Its Applications On Load Frequency Control Of Power Systems

In a closed-loop CPS (Cyber-Physical Systems), a core component such as power plant is usually regulated by a controller with the help of actuators and sensors interconnected through a communication network. This paper investigates the impact of maliciously induced delays on control signals in a CPS. In particular, it presents a simple and yet powerful attack, referred to as random delay attack. In this attack, an adversary induces random delays on a sequence of control signals such that the state of the core component quickly becomes divergent. Moreover, the attack is also effective even if delay compensation techniques are employed. As the attacker in the proposed attack merely induces delays on the control signals, say by momentarily jamming the network link, cryptographic-based protections are not able to defeat the attack. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we simulate the random delay attack on the LFC (Load Frequency Control) system which is one of the most critical components in a power plant. We show that the attack on one area can be propagated to other interconnected areas. In addition, this paper proposes countermeasures on the random delay attack.