IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain

We present the intelligent governor for the smart grid system (IGNORE) to limit the success of attacks when a grid’s cyber system has been compromised and leveraged by an adversary to mount attacks on the physical system. IGNORE is based on the concept of the security reference monitor. It is a comp...

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Main Authors: Yatin Wadhawan, Clifford Neuman, Anas AlMajali
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-09-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/18/6236
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author Yatin Wadhawan
Clifford Neuman
Anas AlMajali
author_facet Yatin Wadhawan
Clifford Neuman
Anas AlMajali
author_sort Yatin Wadhawan
collection DOAJ
description We present the intelligent governor for the smart grid system (IGNORE) to limit the success of attacks when a grid’s cyber system has been compromised and leveraged by an adversary to mount attacks on the physical system. IGNORE is based on the concept of the security reference monitor. It is a component that serves to protect a system from attacks that are more severe and frequent than is acceptable by enforcing security policies on the actions of the system’s higher-level functions. It enforces security and safety policies by ignoring commands issued by a system’s higher-level functions if by executing those commands may cause violations of its security and safety constraints. The underlying principle for generating security policies is the requirement and safety property that evaluates whether commands issued by a cyber system are required and safe in/for the physical system. Our key contribution is to present the methodology to design a governor for a grid’s higher-level function, that is, demand response. We define a set of attacks prevented by the governor, a set of rules that define the governor, and demonstrate its effectiveness through empirical results. This work sheds light upon how a higher-level functionality of a smart grid system is protected by analyzing the system’s cyber and physical aspects even when some parts of the cyber system are compromised.
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spelling doaj.art-886287dedc324c76a9ad3439aeb8053b2023-11-20T12:59:05ZengMDPI AGApplied Sciences2076-34172020-09-011018623610.3390/app10186236IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical DomainYatin Wadhawan0Clifford Neuman1Anas AlMajali2Information Science Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0894, USAInformation Science Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0894, USADepartment of Computer Engineering, The Hashemite University, Zarqa 13133, JordanWe present the intelligent governor for the smart grid system (IGNORE) to limit the success of attacks when a grid’s cyber system has been compromised and leveraged by an adversary to mount attacks on the physical system. IGNORE is based on the concept of the security reference monitor. It is a component that serves to protect a system from attacks that are more severe and frequent than is acceptable by enforcing security policies on the actions of the system’s higher-level functions. It enforces security and safety policies by ignoring commands issued by a system’s higher-level functions if by executing those commands may cause violations of its security and safety constraints. The underlying principle for generating security policies is the requirement and safety property that evaluates whether commands issued by a cyber system are required and safe in/for the physical system. Our key contribution is to present the methodology to design a governor for a grid’s higher-level function, that is, demand response. We define a set of attacks prevented by the governor, a set of rules that define the governor, and demonstrate its effectiveness through empirical results. This work sheds light upon how a higher-level functionality of a smart grid system is protected by analyzing the system’s cyber and physical aspects even when some parts of the cyber system are compromised.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/18/6236smart gridpower gridcyber–physical systemgovernorcyber–physical attacks
spellingShingle Yatin Wadhawan
Clifford Neuman
Anas AlMajali
IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain
Applied Sciences
smart grid
power grid
cyber–physical system
governor
cyber–physical attacks
title IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain
title_full IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain
title_fullStr IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain
title_full_unstemmed IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain
title_short IGNORE: A Policy Server to Prevent Cyber-Attacks from Propagating to the Physical Domain
title_sort ignore a policy server to prevent cyber attacks from propagating to the physical domain
topic smart grid
power grid
cyber–physical system
governor
cyber–physical attacks
url https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/18/6236
work_keys_str_mv AT yatinwadhawan ignoreapolicyservertopreventcyberattacksfrompropagatingtothephysicaldomain
AT cliffordneuman ignoreapolicyservertopreventcyberattacksfrompropagatingtothephysicaldomain
AT anasalmajali ignoreapolicyservertopreventcyberattacksfrompropagatingtothephysicaldomain