Analyzing Locally Coordinated Cyber-Physical Attacks for Undetectable Line Outages

This paper offers the pertinent studies on the locally coordinated cyber-physical attacks that would use the incomplete network information and could cause undetectable transmission line outages. First, power line reactances in the targeted local areas are estimated and the remaining power system is modeled equivalently. Next, a mathematical model in the mixed-integer linear programming form is presented for analyzing the attacks, which would cause undetectable line outages while maximizing the system risk resulting from the power flow redistribution. An efficient greedy search-based heuristic method is developed in order to offer satisfactory solutions for real-time applications. Last, the proposed model for the locally coordinated cyber-physical attacks and the corresponding solution strategies are verified by the case studies based on a six-bus system and the two-area IEEE RTS-96 system.