Data-centric threats and their impacts to real-time communications in smart grid

One of the most distinguished challenges in studying the aftermath of cyber attacks in smart grid lies in data-centric threats, which refer to cyber attacks aimed at gaining advantage or sabotage the infrastructure by manipulating the data exchanged in the underlying communication network. Even though such attacks are critical by itself in the information network, they will result in more serious impacts to the power grid. This is because for an information-centric network, distorted or delayed information undermines services and applications, in the case of a power grid, however, these data-centric attacks may result in unstable systems, which may further detrimentally impact the power supplies. In this paper, we study the impacts of data-centric attacks in the real-time communication network of smart gird, and further the consequences caused to the power grid. Our study provides insights to both smart grid security research and operation. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.