Identification of vulnerable node clusters against false data injection attack in an AMI based Smart Grid

In today׳s Smart Grid, the power Distribution System Operator (DSO) uses real-time measurement data from the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) for efficient, accurate and advanced monitoring and control. Smart Grids are vulnerable to sophisticated data integrity attacks like the False Data Injection (FDI) attack on the AMI sensors that produce misleading operational decision of the power system (Liu et al., 2011 [1]). Presently, there is a lack of research in the area of power system analysis that relates the FDI attacks with system stability that is important for both analysis of the effect of cyber-attack and for taking preventive measures of protection.

In this paper, we study the physical characteristics of the power system, and draw a relationship between the system stability indices and the FDI attacks. We identify the level of vulnerabilities of each AMI node in terms of different degrees of FDI attacks. In order to obtain the interdependent relationship of different nodes, we implement an improved Constriction Factor Particle Swarm Optimization (CF-PSO) based hybrid clustering technique to group the nodes into the most, the moderate and the least vulnerable clusters. With extensive experiments and analysis using two benchmark test systems, we show that the nodes in the most vulnerable cluster exhibit higher likelihood of de-stabilizing system operation compared to other nodes. Complementing research is the construction of FDI attacks and their countermeasures, this paper focuses on the understanding of characteristics and practical effect of FDI attacks on the operation of the Smart Grid by analysing the interdependent nature of its physical properties.