Digital substation cyber security analysis with SYN-flood attack as a simulation case

Cyber security is a major issue and a hard work for digital substation who uses Ethernet communication network and open IEC 61850 communication protocol. Based on message type and data stream analysis of digital substation communication, the cyber security threats faced by digital substation have been classified and analyzed at first; knowing the performance of a cyber-attack is the first step for latter attack detection and defense, for which simulation is a better choice; in this paper, the most malicious and harmful SYN-Flood attack has been taken as a simulation case by OPNET platform, and from which the performance of SYN-Flood attack has been observed and analyzed for further attack detection and defense.