An electrical grid and its SCADA under cyber attacks: Modelling versus a Hybrid Test Bed

There is an increasing concern over the cyber security of Critical Infrastructures (CI) due to the increasing ability of cyber attackers to cause even catastrophic failures. It is mainly due to the pervasiveness of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and to the consequent de isolation of SCADA (Supervision, Control and Data Acquisition) system, which represents the nervous system of most CIs. Cyber attacks could block the connection between SCADA Control Centre and its remote devices or insert fake commands and/or measurements in the equipment communications. With reference to an actual case study, constituted by a SCADA system controlling a portion of a medium voltage electrical grid and a corporate network, we investigate the use of modeling versus a hybrid test bed to conduct actual cyber attacks on SCADA and to analyze their consequences on SCADA and on the electrical grid. Modeling is in charge of predicting consequences of cyber attacks on SCADA and the electrical grid, while the test bed is in charge to reproduce cyber attacks and their propagation more realistically then modeling. The hybrid test bed is constituted by the coexistence of actual and simulated systems and devices of SCADA, corporate network and the electrical grid. The final hybrid test bed will include the most adequate models essentially to reproduce missing components such as the electrical grid and parts of corporate network and SCADA system. © 2014 IEEE.