Coordinated Heat and Power Cyber-Attacks With Time Window Matching Strategy

The integration of information and communication infrastructures has dramatically increased the cyber vulnerability of integrated energy systems (IES). Due to the coupling among various energy systems, cyber-attacks on one sub-energy system may transmit to and affect other sub-energy systems, subsequently threatening the security of the whole IES. This paper develops a destructive coordinated heat and power cyber-attack for the first time, analyzes its risk on the heat and electric integrated energy systems, and reveals its potential consequences. In the developed coordinated attack, a bi-level attacker-operator model is formulated to identify the worst-case scenario caused by the coordinated attack. Two types of false data injection attacks are considered in this coordinated attack strategy: the improved load redistribution attack on the power system and the false heat load attack on the heating system. In order to accurately characterize the stealthiness and adverse effect of the coordinated attack, a time window matching strategy that handles the delay characteristics of the heating system and the latency property of the false heat load attack is proposed, along with the matching of attack parameters in different attacks. Simulation results show that the proposed coordinated attack significantly impacts the system in economic losses, load shedding, renewable power curtailment, and line overload.