Cyberattack Detection in Large-Scale Smart Grids using Chebyshev Graph Convolutional Networks

As a highly complex and integrated cyber-physical system, modern power grids are exposed to cyberattacks. False data injection attacks (FDIAs), specifically, represent a major class of cyber threats to smart grids by targeting the measurement data's integrity. Although various solutions have been proposed to detect those cyberattacks, the vast majority of the works have ignored the inherent graph structure of the power grid measurements and validated their detectors only for small test systems with less than a few hundred buses. To better exploit the spatial correlations of smart grid measurements, this paper proposes a deep learning model for cyberattack detection in large-scale AC power grids using Chebyshev Graph Convolutional Networks (CGCN). By reducing the complexity of spectral graph filters and making them localized, CGCN provides a fast and efficient convolution operation to model the graph structural smart grid data. We numerically verify that the proposed CGCN based detector surpasses the state-of-the-art model by 7.86 in detection rate and 9.67 in false alarm rate for a large-scale power grid with 2848 buses. It is notable that the proposed approach detects cyberattacks under 4 milliseconds for a 2848-bus system, which makes it a good candidate for real-time detection of cyberattacks in large systems.

Joint Detection and Localization of Stealth False Data Injection Attacks in Smart Grids using Graph Neural Networks

False data injection attacks (FDIA) are becoming an active avenue of research as such attacks are more frequently encountered in power systems. Contrary to the detection of these attacks, less attention has been paid to identifying the attacked units of the grid. To this end, this work jointly studies detecting and localizing the stealth FDIA in modern power grids. Exploiting the inherent graph topology of power systems as well as the spatial correlations of smart meters' data, this paper proposes an approach based on the graph neural network (GNN) to identify the presence and location of the FDIA. The proposed approach leverages the auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) type graph convolutional filters which offer better noise robustness and frequency response flexibility compared to the polynomial type graph convolutional filters such as Chebyshev. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work based on GNN that automatically detects and localizes FDIA in power systems. Extensive simulations and visualizations show that the proposed approach outperforms the available methods in both detection and localization FDIA for different IEEE test systems. Thus, the targeted areas in power grids can be identified and preventive actions can be taken before the attack impacts the grid.

Graph Neural Networks Based Detection of Stealth False Data Injection Attacks in Smart Grids

False data injection attacks (FDIAs) represent a major class of attacks that aim to break the integrity of measurements by injecting false data into the smart metering devices in power grid. To the best of authors' knowledge, no study has attempted to design a detector that automatically models the underlying graph topology and spatially correlated measurement data of the smart grids to better detect cyber attacks. The contributions of this paper to detect and mitigate FDIAs are twofold. First, we present a generic, localized, and stealth (unobservable) attack generation methodology and a publicly accessible dataset for researchers to develop and test their algorithms. Second, we propose a Graph Neural Network (GNN) based, scalable and real-time detector of FDIAs that efficiently combines model-driven and data-driven approaches by incorporating the inherent physical connections of modern AC power grids and exploiting the spatial correlations of the measurement data. It is experimentally verified by comparing the proposed GNN based detector with the currently available FDIA detectors in literature that our algorithm outperforms the best available solutions by 6.21\%, 0.69\%, and 2.73\% in detection rate and by 3.65\%, 0.34\% and 1.38\% in F1 score for standard IEEE testbeds with 14, 118, and 300 buses, respectively.