The rise of cyber threats on critical infrastructure and its potential for devastating consequences, has significantly increased. The dependency of new power grid technology on information, data analytic and communication systems make the entire electricity network vulnerable to cyber threats. Power transformers play a critical role within the power grid and are now commonly enhanced through factory add-ons or intelligent monitoring systems added later to improve the condition monitoring of critical and long lead time assets such as transformers. However, the increased connectivity of those power transformers opens the door to more cyber attacks. Therefore, the need to detect and prevent cyber threats is becoming critical. The first step towards that would be a deeper understanding of the potential cyber-attacks landscape against power transformers. Much of the existing literature pays attention to smart equipment within electricity distribution networks, and most methods proposed are based on model-based detection algorithms. Moreover, only a few of these works address the security vulnerabilities of power elements, especially transformers within the transmission network. To the best of our knowledge, there is no study in the literature that systematically investigate the cybersecurity challenges against the newly emerged smart transformers. This paper addresses this shortcoming by exploring the vulnerabilities and the attack vectors of power transformers within electricity networks, the possible attack scenarios and the risks associated with these attacks.
翻译:电力基础设施受到网络威胁的风险日益增加,这种风险可能带来严重后果。新型电网技术对信息、数据分析和通信系统的依赖使整个电力网络容易受到网络安全威胁。变压器在电力系统中起着关键作用,现在经常通过后期添加的智能监控系统来增强,从而提高关键和长引线时间设备(如变压器)的状态监控。然而,这些变压器的增加连接性为更多网络攻击打开了大门。因此,检测和预防网络威胁变得至关重要。向这个目标迈出的第一步将是更深入地了解可能针对变压器的网络攻击现状。现有文献大部分关注电力分布网络中的智能设备,并且提出的大多数方法基于基于模型的检测算法。此外,这些工作中只有少数几篇涵盖了输电网络中电力元件(特别是变压器)的安全漏洞。据我们所知,没有一篇研究系统地探讨新型智能变压器的网络安全挑战的文献。本文通过探索电力网络中的变压器的漏洞和攻击向量、可能的攻击方案以及与这些攻击相关的风险来解决这一缺陷。