A novel hybrid methodology to secure GOOSE messages against cyberattacks in smart grids

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 1857
• Main Authors: Hussain, Shahbaz, Iqbal, Atif, Hussain, S M Suhail, Zanero, Stefano, Shikfa, Abdullatif, Ragaini, Enrico, Khan, Irfan, Alammari, Rashid
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 01.02.2023; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Communication; Cybersecurity; Electrical transmission; Semantics
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-27157-z

IEC 61850 is emerging as a popular communication standard for smart grids. Standardized communication in smart grids has an unwanted consequence of higher vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Attackers exploit the standardized semantics of the communication protocols to launch different types of attacks such as false data injection (FDI) attacks. Hence, there is a need to develop a cybersecurity testbed and novel mitigation strategies to study the impact of attacks and mitigate them. This paper presents a testbed and methodology to simulate FDI attacks on IEC 61850 standard compliant Generic Object-Oriented Substation Events (GOOSE) protocol using real time digital simulator (RTDS) together with open-source tools such as Snort and Wireshark. Furthermore, a novel hybrid cybersecurity solution by the name of sequence content resolver is proposed to counter such attacks on the GOOSE protocol in smart grids. Utilizing the developed testbed FDI attacks in the form of replay and masquerade attacks on are launched and the impact of attacks on electrical side is studied. Finally, the proposed hybrid cybersecurity solution is implemented with the developed testbed and its effectiveness is demonstrated.