Smart Grid Attacks and Countermeasures

The term “Smart Grid” has been coined and used for several years to describe the efforts of the current power grid modernization effort. This effort plans to introduce self-healing, energy efficiency, reliability, and security using two-way digital communications and control technology, along with a host of other valuable attributes. As a bi-product of this modernization and newly gained systems interoperability, new communications and management interfaces are produced in both the cyber realm and physical domains. The increase of the public physical presence and cyber footprint opens up avenues for compromise to hackers and individuals with malicious intent. This survey paper will categorize and summarize vulnerabilities in the framework of the current power grid and the software and hardware which is currently being used to upgrade the grid. The paper will also detail known countermeasures which can be used to mitigate or eliminate attacks which exploit such vulnerabilities.