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Virginia Tech

Energy And Power Systems Simulated Attack Algorithm For Defense Testbed And Analysis

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The power grid has evolved over the course of many decades with the usage of cyber systems and communications such as Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA); however, due to their connectivity to the internet, the cyber-power system can be infiltrated by malicious attackers. Encryption is not a singular solution. Currently, there are several cyber security measures in development, including those based on artificial intelligence. However, there is a need for a varying but consistent attack algorithm to serve as a testbed for these AI or other practices to be trained and tested. This is important because in the event of a real attacker, it is not possible to know exactly where they will attack and in what order. Therefore, the proposed method in this thesis is to use criminology concepts and fuzzy logic inference to create this algorithm and determine its effectiveness in making decisions on a cyber-physical system model. The method takes various characteristics of the attacker as an input, builds their ideal target node, and then compares the nodes to the high-impact target and chooses one as the goal. Based on that target and their knowledge, the attackers will attack nodes if they have resources. The results show that the proposed method can be used to create a variety of attacks with varying damaging effects, and one other set of tests shows the possibility for multiple attacks, such as denial of service and false data injection. The proposed method has been validated using an extended cyber-physical IEEE 13-node distribution system and sensitivity tests to ensure that the ruleset created would take each of the inputs well.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Electrical Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2023

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Ruttle, Zachary Andrew
Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Liu, Chen-Ching
  • Jin, Ming
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Centeno, Virgilio A.
  • Mehrizi-Sani, Ali

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:37135
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115273

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Ruttle, Zachary Andrew. Energy And Power Systems Simulated Attack Algorithm For Defense Testbed And Analysis. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2023. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/115273