False Data Injection Cyber Range of Modernized Substation System

The extensive deployment of information and communication technologies in modern power grid makes the grid more vulnerable to cyber attacks, resulting in threats to the economy, social stability and sometimes human lives. While it is necessary to deploy cybersecurity measures to counter such threats, evaluation of the effectiveness and negative impact of the cybersecurity solutions through extensive experiments is challenging. For instance, it is often very restricted or even impossible to conduct experiments directly on the operating physical systems as the interruption of those critical systems will incur significant financial losses. In this paper, we discuss components and configurations that are necessary to implement a cyber range, a virtual environment for cybersecurity evaluation and experimentation, for emerging false data injection attacks against the smart grid. We also discuss the proof-of-concept implementation using open-source software and discuss case studies of attacks against modernized substation systems.