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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 397 records · Page 22
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

A critical review of cyber-physical security for building automation systems

Modern Building Automation Systems (BASs), as the brain that enable the smartness of a smart building, often require increased connectivity both among system components as well as with outside entities, such as the cloud, to enable low-cost remote management, optimized automation via outsourced cloud analytics, and increased building-grid integrations. As smart buildings move towards open communication technologies, providing access to BASs through the building's intranet, or even remotely through the Internet, has become a common practice. However, increased connectivity and accessibility come with increased cyber security threats. BASs were historically developed as closed environments with limited cyber-security considerations. As a result, BASs in many buildings are vulnerable to cyber-attacks that may cause adverse consequences, such as occupant discomfort, excessive energy usage, and unexpected equipment downtime. Therefore, there is a strong need to advance the state-of-the-art in cyber-physical security for BASs and provide practical solutions for attack mitigation in buildings. However, an inclusive and systematic review of BAS vulnerabilities, potential cyber-attacks with impact assessment, detection & defense approaches, and cyber resilient control strategies is currently lacking in the literature. This review paper fills the gap by providing a comprehensive up-to-date review of cyber-physical security for BASs at three levels in commercial buildings: management level, automation level, and field level. The general BASs vulnerabilities and protocol-specific vulnerabilities for the four dominant BAS protocols (i.e., BACnet, KNX, LonWorks, and Modbus) are reviewed, followed by a discussion on four attack targets and seven potential attack scenarios. Furthermore, the impact of cyber-attacks on BASs is summarized as signal corruption, signal delaying, and signal blocking. The typical cyber-attack detection and defense approaches are identified at the three levels. Cyber resilient control strategies for BASs under attack are categorized into passive and active resilient control schemes. Open challenges and future opportunities are finally discussed.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Spatio-Temporal Characterization of Synchrophasor Data Against Spoofing Attacks in Smart Grids

“Source ID Mix” has emerged as a new type of highly deceiving attack which can alter the source information of synchrophasor data measured by multiple phasor measurement units, thereby paralyzing many wide-area measurement systems applications. To address such sophisticated cyber attacks, we have exploited the spatio-temporal characteristics of synchrophasor data for authenticating measurements’ source information. Specifically, the source authentication is performed when the measurements are subjected to three types of spoofing attacks. Some practical difficulties in applying the proposed method on real-time authentication caused by insufficient measurement data have also been solved. Experimental results with real synchrophasor measurements have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method in detecting such complicated data spoofing and improving power systems’ cyber security.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2019

Learning Behavior of Distribution System Discrete Control Devices for Cyber-Physical Security

Conventional cyber-security intrusion detection systems monitor network traffic for malicious activity and indications that an adversary has gained access to the system. The approach discussed here expands the idea of a traditional intrusion detection system within electrical power systems, specifically power distribution networks, by monitoring the physical behavior of the grid. This is achieved through the use of high-rate distribution Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), alongside SCADA packets analysis, for the purpose of monitoring the behavior of discrete control devices. In this work we present a set of algorithms for passively learning the control logic of voltage regulators and switched capacitor banks. Upon detection of an abnormal operation, the operator is alerted and further action can be taken. Finally, the proposed learning algorithms are validated on both simulated data and on measured PMU data from a utility pilot deployment site.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Design of Zone-Based Hierarchical Protection System for 100% Renewable Microgrids: Preprint

Design of a reliable and secure protection system for a 100% renewable microgrid with only inverter-based resources (IBRs), is quite challenging. Most of the existing protection schemes in the state-of-the-art are suitable for microgrids with mixed-type of distributed energy resources (DERs) that covers both rotating machine-based DERs as well as IBR-based DERs, where the fault current level is moderately high. Due to drastic reduction in fault current level based on mode of operation and the variation of the low fault current level based on the operating level of the IBRs, the existing protection schemes face critical challenges, in case of a 100% renewable microgrid. This article proposes a zone-based hierarchical protection scheme that partitions a microgrid into various zones-of-protection and assigns speed-based hierarchical protection schemes in order to address the fundamental challenges of such microgrids. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using time-domain simulation study on a microgrid test system. The results corroborates that the proposed hierarchical zone-based protection scheme exhibits enhanced reliability, security and dependability while tested with various fault cases (fault types, locations, and impedances), and non-fault cases during both grid-tied and islanded mode.

grid-forming inverter↗
NASA NTRS2013

Global Climate Change, Food Security and the U.S. Food System

Climate change influences on the major pillars of food security. Each of the four elements of food security (availability,access,utilization,andstability) is vulnerable to changes in climate. For example,reductions in production related to regional drought influence food availability at multiple scales. Changes in price influences the ability of certain populations to purchase food (access). Utilization maybe affected when production zones shift, reducing the availability of preferred or culturally appropriate types of food within a region. Stability of the food supply may be highly uncertain given an increased incidence of extreme climatic events and their influence on production patterns.

Climate↗
NASA NTRS2004

Model based verification of the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Protocol for NASA systems

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has tens of thousands of networked computer systems and applications. Software Security vulnerabilities present risks such as lost or corrupted data, information theft, and unavailability of critical systems. These risks represent potentially enormous costs to NASA. The NASA Code Q research initiative 'Reducing Software Security Risk (RSSR) Trough an Integrated Approach' offers formal verification of information technology (IT), through the creation of a Software Security Assessment Instrument (SSAI), to address software security risks.

software security↗
DOE OSTI2019

Secured control of circuit breakers in a digital substation

Methods and systems for secured control of circuit breakers in an electric power substation against undesired direct operation. Consequences of a malicious action are prevented or mitigated using a validation approach that either blocks the command or ensures a negligible effect on system operation. An example method, suitable for implementation in a monitoring device in an electric power substation, includes receiving a command to open or close a circuit breaker. In response, one or more state parameters for the electric power network that comprises the substation are then predicted, the predicted state parameters reflecting an operating state for the network under the assumption that the received command is executed. The method further comprises comparing the predicted one or more state parameters to corresponding operational limits. Execution of the command is then blocked, in response to determining that one or more of the predicted state parameters violate the corresponding operational limits.

Kondabathini, Anil↗
DOE OSTI2017

Physical Watermarking for Securing Cyber-Physical Systems via Packet Drop Injections

Physical watermarking is a well known solution for detecting integrity attacks on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) such as the smart grid. Here, a random control input is injected into the system in order to authenticate physical dynamics and sensors which may have been corrupted by adversaries. Packet drops may naturally occur in a CPS due to network imperfections. To our knowledge, previous work has not considered the role of packet drops in detecting integrity attacks. In this paper, we investigate the merit of injecting Bernoulli packet drops into the control inputs sent to actuators as a new physical watermarking scheme. With the classical linear quadratic objective function and an independent and identically distributed packet drop injection sequence, we study the effect of packet drops on meeting security and control objectives. Our results indicate that the packet drops could act as a potential physical watermark for attack detection in CPSs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Technologies for providing secure emergency power control of high voltage direct current transmission system

Technologies for providing secure emergency power control of a high voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) system include a controller. The controller includes circuitry configured to receive status data indicative of a present physical status of a power system. The circuitry is also configured to obtain an emergency power control command triggered by a remote source. The emergency power control command is to be executed by an HVDC transmission system of the power system. Further, the circuitry is configured to determine, as a function of the status data, whether the emergency power control command is consistent with the present physical status of the power system and block, in response to a determination that the emergency power control command is not consistent with the present physical status of the power system, execution of the emergency power control command by the HVDC transmission system.

Pan, Jiuping↗
DOE OSTI2019

Characterizing Vulnerabilities Associated with Connected Lighting: Exploring Authorization Protocols

Cities are upgrading their infrastructure and converting traditional indoor and outdoor luminaires to Connected Lighting Systems equipped with sensors in an aggressive effort to reduce energy consumption, increase sustainability, and improve the quality of life. When you take something seemingly benign like a lighting system and connect it to the internet, if improperly secured a potential attack vector for hackers is created. Hackers could then access sensitive information, pivot into other networks, shut down services, or enslave devices to do their bidding. In attempt to close this attack vector and secure these systems, this paper extends previous work that investigated, compared and contrasted authentication vulnerabilities in Connected Lighting Systems that identified the need for additional testing and improved test method documentation. One additional authentication test and four new authorization tests were developed utilizing the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) as a test development and documentation guide. The new tests were integrated with the previous work to develop an updated test method with a focus on describing test procedures to make them easy to understand and repeat. In addition, a first Connected Lighting System use case was established to begin developing threat profiles that will aid in the identification of vulnerabilities whose focus areas extend beyond authentication and authorization. This use case describes the generation and flow of CLS data which assists in specifying methods to harden CLSs from outside interference and exploitation that can be implemented immediately on existing CLSs and as new products come to market.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Resilient Design of Continuous-time Distributed Optimization Algorithm in the Presence of Cyber-attacks

This paper presents a continuous-time resilient distributed optimization algorithm based on competitive interaction design method on connected graphs in the presence of adversaries. Here, the competitive interaction method allows us to design a network that protects the multi-agent systems from adversaries without requiring high network connectivity. In addition, the proposed algorithm does not require the global information about the number of adversaries. First, we show that the proposed distributed algorithm solves the resilient distributed optimization problem with no attack on the communication links. Second, we show that the proposed continuous-time distributed optimization algorithm on connected graphs converges to the small neighborhood of the optimal solution in the presence of cyber-attacks onto the communication channel. Simulations are presented to illustrate our theoretical results.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2018

Machine learning for energy-water nexus: challenges and opportunities

Modeling the interactions of water and energy systems is important to the enforcement of infrastructure security and system sustainability. To this end, recent technological advancement has allowed the production of large volumes of data associated with functioning of these sectors. We are beginning to see that statistical and machine learning techniques can help elucidate characteristic patterns across these systems from water availability, transport, and use to energy generation, fuel supply, and customer demand, and in the interdependencies among these systems that can leave these systems vulnerable to cascading impacts from single disruptions. In this paper, we discuss ways in which data and machine learning can be applied to the challenges facing the energy-water nexus along with the potential issues associated with the machine learning techniques themselves. We then survey machine learning techniques that have found application to date in energy-water nexus problems. We conclude by outlining future research directions and opportunities for collaboration among the energy-water nexus and machine learning communities that can lead to mutual synergistic advantage.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Counter Unmanned Aircraft System (CUAS) Implementation Storyline

This report is an FY21 Deliverable for NA-21.1, International Nuclear Security, WBS 21.1.1.1.4 Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (CUAS), under C.1.4, Develop Suite of Engagement Materials and Tools for Country/Regional Teams. The responsibility for protecting nuclear assets is an immense challenge for governments. Policy changes based on geopolitics, instability of government regimes, and technological advances that facilitate theft of nuclear material all contribute to the enduring task of staying current with these and other threats. One of the recent threats to come along is the use of drones or Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to circumvent traditional Physical Security Systems. There are significant resources invested on physical protection systems for securing nuclear assets, but many of these systems can now be bypassed by simply flying over these measures intended to guard against ground attacks. In recent years the threat increased to hostile groups to attack or surveil due to advances and availability of UAS platforms. It is now more urgent to implement systems and procedures to counter the UAS threat. The United States (U.S.) federal government granted authority to the Department of Energy (DOE) to implement a Counter UAS to protect nuclear assets. This document provides a very practical and transparent view of the trials, tribulations and challenges we encountered while implementing the first Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System (CUAS) Program in the DOE at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2020

Supporting Cyber Security of Power Distribution Systems by Detecting Differences Between Real-time Micro-Synchrophasor Measurements and Cyber-Reported SCADA (Final Report)

As modern power grids tend towards greater levels of automation and communication, the challenges of identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks are ones that are increasingly demanding attention. Today’s power system has evolved to form the foundational bedrock of modern society, and an attack on this infrastructure could prove disastrous. In this project we were tasked to investigate the use of distribution synchrophasors as an independent isolated sensor network with which we can corroborate, or flag potentially spoofed,Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) data. We adapted an approach to marry the underlying physical properties of power systems with the network communications used by power systems in order to offer insights unattainable by either data stream isolation. While the concept of intrusion detection systems (IDS) is well understood for monitoring network traffic and traditional IT computing systems, the approach discussed in this report is motivated by several key notions: first, current SCADA communications alone presents an incomplete view of the grid. Second, the power grid, and the equipment controlling it, is grounded by laws of physics. Given this, we leverage high-frequency physical grid measurements to understand the physical condition of the grid, and combine this with SCADA. While high-frequency physical grid measurements and SCADA communication over Internet Protocol (IP) networks are fundamentally disparate information sources, when collectively examined through appropriate lenses, they offer a much more nuanced depiction of the grid.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗