Toward Data Integrity Attacks Against Distributed Dynamic State Estimation in Smart Grid

With the continuous expansion of the power grid nodes scale, traditional centralized state estimation method shows certain limitations in estimation efficiency and accuracy. Recently, some power grids adopt a distributed state estimation method, in which each partition independently estimates the partial state information by partitioning the entire power system. However, the deviation of the state estimation in certain partition will result in the deviation of the estimation results in the entire power grid system. In this paper, we propose the attack strategy against the distributed state estimation in smart grids from two perspectives, i.e. the attack against local physical measurement value of the power system partition and the attack against the measurement value of coordination center. Moreover, the theoretical analysis of the state estimation deviation caused by the proposed data integrity attack and the propagation processes of proposed attack vectors in measurement calculations are formalized. The effectiveness of the proposed attack strategy is verified in the IEEE-30 bus and IEEE-118 bus systems. Simulation results show that attacking against a certain partition of a distributed system can indirectly affect the state estimation results of other partitions and attacking against the measurement value of coordination center can directly threaten the state estimation results of the entire power grid. Note to Practitioners— This paper proposes two attack strategies against the distributed state estimation of power grid from two perspectives, i.e. the attack against local physical measurement value of the power system partition and the attack against the measurement value of coordination center. Most of the previous works fail to formalize the state estimation deviation of both partial and entire state estimation results of power grid after the attacker launches the attack against the distributed state estimation. We formalize the state estimation deviation caused by the proposed data integrity attack and the propagation processes of proposed attack vectors in measurement calculations. The effectiveness of the proposed attack strategy against the state estimation of power grid is verified in the IEEE-30 bus and IEEE-118 bus systems. Simulation results show that attacking against a certain partition of power grid can indirectly cause the deviation in the state estimation results of entire power grid and attacking against the measurement value of the coordination center can directly threaten the state estimation results of the entire power grid. In conclusion, the proposed attack strategies are helpful for the research community to design detection strategies in a targeted manner and can be conveniently applied to the real-world security management system of smart grid.