Resilience Against Single Attacks in
Wireless Mesh Networking for the
Smart Grid
Tae (Tom) Oh
Associate Professor
Galisono College of Computing and Information Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
4/13/2015
Tom Oh, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Table of Contents
Driving Force of Change in Electrical Power
 What is Smart Grid?
 Smart Grid Benefits
 Wireless Mesh Networking for Smart Grid.
 Resilience Against Single Attack
 A Proposed Solution for the Single Attack
 NY State Smart Grid Consortium
 Summery

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Driving Forces of Change in
Electric Power

Rising Greenhouse Gas Emissions (CO2) have the potential to seriously
impact the environment and local economies.

Power Outages wreak havoc and cost billions of dollars in lost productivity and
revenue.

Security Threats are constant to the electric infrastructure. The physical and cyber
security risks, from terrorists and hackers continue to grow exponentially.

Innovative Technology holds significant promise as a “game changer.” Innovation
is pervasive across the electricity value chain (from smart appliances to advanced
energy storage technologies).

Evolving Standards hold the key to the pace of development. Technical
interoperability will be vital to ease of use, adoption rates, cyber security and
avoiding stranded costs. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
is developing these standards in conjunction with the GridWise Architecture
Council (GWAC).
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What is Smart grid?
A smart grid puts information and communication technology into
electricity generation, delivery, and consumption, making systems
cleaner, safer, and more reliable and efficient.
U.S. Department of Energy Definition:
A smart grid integrates advanced sensing technologies, control methods, and
integrated communications into the current electricity grid.
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What does the concept of Smart Grid
look like?
Electrical Infrastructure
“Intelligence” Infrastructure
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Smart Grid Applications
Demand Response and Dynamic Pricing
Distributed Generation and Alternate Energy Sources
Self-Healing Wide-Area Protection and Islanding
Asset Management and On-Line Equipment Monitoring
Real-time Simulation and Contingency Analysis
Participation in Energy Markets
Shared Information – Continuously Optimizing – Intelligent Responses!
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Smart Grid Benefits

Economic Development
◦ New Jobs: The manufacture, installation, operation
and maintenance of the smart grid and its
components will create new jobs within the state.
◦ Innovation: Smart grid innovation will enable the
growth of business while rewarding customers with
valuable new products.
◦ Lower Costs: Costs rise over time and energy is no
exception, but the smart grid should provide less
costly energy than otherwise would be possible. As
such, it will save customers money which can be
invested or consumed as they choose.
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Smart Grid Benefits-cont

Customer Satisfaction
◦ Higher Customer Satisfaction: The combination of lower costs, improved
reliability and better customer control will raise satisfaction among all types of
customers (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional).
◦ Improved Reliability: Smart grid will reduce and shorten outages and improve the
quality of power.
◦ Shorter Outages: The incorporation of advanced sensors and measurement (PMU),
communication networks and smart systems will allow an unprecedented degree of
system visibility and situational awareness of the electric power system. Smart grid will
result in shorter outages through its “islanding” and “self-healing” features.
◦ Customer Energy/Cost Savings: As pricing becomes more transparent and is
aligned with the underlying economics of generation and distribution, customers’
decisions to save money will benefit society as well
◦ Highest Security: Security will be incorporated into the design of the smart grid and will
require the implementation of practices and procedures by individual stakeholders. In this
way, the physical and cyber security risks can be managed to the highest standards possible.
◦ Timely renewables: Smart grid is the enabler of more renewable energy. Its
development will allow for the timely incorporation of these sustainable sources of
power in a user-friendly, cost-effective manner.
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Wireless Mesh Networking for the
Smart Grid
4/13/2015
www.elstermetering.com
Tom Oh, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Wireless Mesh Networking for the
Smart Grid Assumptions
Smart meters located at homes and businesses
compose a neighborhood area network (NAN).
• The NAN architecture is assumed to be a wireless
mesh network
•
• Meters communicate bidirectionally with a neighborhood
"collector" via multihop routing.
• Collectors are connected directly to a utility provider.
Smart meters have a limited range and not all meters
can reach a collector directly.
• Label switching concept in applied.
• A meter may malfunction and interfere with the
proper forwarding of packets, e.g., delaying, altering,
misrouting, dropping, or misinserting packets.
•
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Resilience Against Single
Attacks
A wireless mesh network depends on the
cooperation of each node to properly
forward packets to their destinations.
 If a malicious attacker was located in a
path, it could interfere with packet
forwarding
 Serious Problem: the traditional
method to verify receipt of packets is
acknowledgements and retransmission
time-outs.

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Resilience Against Single Attacks
Example



The sender waits for an acknowledgement or times out
and retransmits.
If an attacker within the path is dropping packets,
the destination would have no way to know that
packets have been dropped, and the sender would not
know if packets are being dropped due to malice
or normal congestion conditions.
Moreover, an attacker could generate false
acknowledgements to the sender to make it believe
that packets had been delivered.
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A Proposed Solution
A new method taking advantage of route
diversity in the mesh network.
 Least two disjoint routes

◦ Primary route: Used for send data
◦ Secondary route: Used for send verification
meta-data periodically.
Sender
Data
LSP X
Destination
D
S
LSP Y
Verification
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A Proposed Solution-cont
Sender
Data
LSP X
Destination
D
S
LSP Y
Verification
•Interference in the primary route by a malicious or malfunctioning
meter or collector can be detected by the verification meta-data
in secondary route.
•Verification meta-data describes the packets sent along the primary route.
Meta-data fields:
LSP = X;
Time interval = 10 sec;
Current time = 0900;
Number of packets sent = 9;
Number of bytes sent = 1068;
Hash of packets sent = xxxxx.
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Other Research Activities in Smart
Grid


A Method for Anonymous Packet
Forwarding for Smart Grid.
Research Activity with Tenrehte
◦ www.tenrehte.com
 Enabling real-time communication between the consumer and utility so
consumers can tailor their energy consumption based on individual
preferences, like price and/or environmental concerns.

Member of NY State Smart Grid
Consortium.
◦ Golisano College of Sustainability
◦ Golisano College of Computing and Information Science
 Smart grid networking and security
◦ College of Engineering
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New York State Strategic Smart
Grid Vision
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NY State Smart Grid Consortium
Members
Utilities
Central Hudson G&E
Consolidated Edison (Con Ed)
Long Island Power Authority (LIPA)
National Grid
New York Power Authority (NYPA)
New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG)
Rochester Gas & Electric (RG&E)
End Users
National Grid
New York Power Authority (NYPA)
Government
Markets
New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)
New York Power Authority (NYPA)
New York State Reliability Council
Universities
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Clarkson University
Cornell University
Rochester Institute of Technology
State University of New York at Buffalo
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Syracuse University
City of New York
New York State Governor’s Office
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
New York Department of Public Service (NYDPS)
New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR)
Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination (CSCIC)
Industry
General Electric
IBM
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Summary
Smart Grid is an emerging technology to
provide next generation power grid and is
promoted by many governments as a way of
addressing energy independence, global
warming and emergency resilience issues.
 We proposed a solution to address a
security issue in wireless mesh networks for
smart grid.
 Plan to publish a study on the performance
and resilience of solution.

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Resources





New York State Smart Grid Consortium
http://nyssmartgrid.com/
U.S. Department of Energy-Smart Grid
www.oe.energy.gov/smartgrid.htm
The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability’s (OE) Web site on
smart grid education, activities and other related topics.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)
www.netl.doe.gov/moderngrid/
NETL’s (part of DOE’s national laboratory system)
Web site on the modernization of our nation’s electricity grid.
Metering.com
www.metering.com
Online resource of utility news and information for
metering and customer management professionals
Smart Grid News.com
www.smartgridnews.com
Online resource for smart grid news, research and analysis
and a guide to smart grid stimulus spending.
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Any Questions?
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Operating Principles













Customer-focused – Developing the most effective, efficient and
accessible smart grid to benefit all customers and communities.
• Strategically Aligned – Building a robust, dynamic and secure electricity
infrastructure by being collectively focused on the sustainable execution
and progression of the NYS smart grid strategy.
• Collaborative – Integrating and leveraging the resources of the consortium
membership - across industry, utility, market, academic and government institutions to assure the open and effective development of shared institutional knowledge.
• Innovative – Managing a well-defined nexus of R&D smart grid technologies
and
systems to accelerate the advancement of technical and institutional interoperability
Performance-driven – Creating a transparent validation process to ensure
the progression and long-term achievement of the NYS smart grid to foster
economic development
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Smart Grid Benefits-2

Customer Satisfaction

Higher Customer Satisfaction: The combination of lower costs, improved

reliability and better customer control will raise satisfaction among all types

of customers (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional).

• Improved Reliability: The Advanced Transmission Operations (ATO) and

Advanced Distribution Operations (ADO) inherent in the smart grid will

reduce and shorten outages and improve the quality of power.

• Shorter Outages: The incorporation of advanced sensors and

measurement (PMU), communication networks and smart systems will

allow an unprecedented degree of system visibility and situational

awareness of the electric power system. Smart grid will result in shorter

outages through its “islanding” and “self-healing” features.

• Increased Efficiency: The integrated advanced components of the smart

grid will improve efficiency and lower costs for customers.

• Customer Energy/Cost Savings: As pricing becomes more transparent and

is aligned with the underlying economics of generation and distribution,

customers’ decisions to save money will benefit society as well.

• Highest Security: Security will be incorporated into the design of the smart

grid and will require the implementation of practices and procedures by

individual stakeholders. In this way, the physical and cyber security risks

can be managed to the highest standards possible.

• Timely renewables: Smart grid is the enabler of more renewable energy.

Its development will allow for the timely incorporation of these sustainable

sources of power in a user-friendly, cost effective manner.
4/13/2015
Tom Oh, Rochester Institute of Technology
22
Wireless Mesh Networks for Smart
Grid Assumption
Smart meters located at homes and businesses
compose a neighborhood area network (NAN).
 The NAN architecture is assumed to be a wireless
mesh network where meters communicate
bidirectionally with a neighborhood "collector" via
multihop routing.
 Collectors are connected directly to a utility provider.
 Smart meters may be occasionally added, removed or
relocated.
 A meter may malfunction and interfere with the proper
forwarding of packets, e.g., delaying, altering, misrouting,
dropping, or misinserting packets.

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Technical Smart Grid Plan















Consumer Visibility to Energy Usage and Cost: Consumers of all categories
must have the ability to see the real-time costs of their energy choices.
• Consumers Empowered to Save Energy Costs and Participate in Markets:
Consumers must be able to act directly or indirectly, on that usage and
pricing information to make choices to save energy and money.
• Utilities have Enhanced Visibility and Control of Distribution Systems for
Reliability and Economics: Utilities have the devices and communication
systems in place to enable them to determine actual operational and
economic conditions at any point, at any time.
• Energy storage is used to improve economics and reliability: Storage
devices are integrated into the grid, to enable the most cost-effective
management of generation and usage.
• Transmission system reliability and economics are enhanced with smart
grid technologies: These are exploited to increase transmission utilization
and support cost effective renewables
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Resilience Against Malicious or
Malfunctioning Meters.

Clustering Algorithm:
◦ Self organize the meters into clusters
associated with each collector.

Routing Protocol:
◦ Calculate a set of label switched paths (LSPs)
to allow every meter to reach at least two
collectors for resiliency.
◦ Label switching is necessitated for privacy.
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