The Design and Implementation of a Cyber Exercise on EPIC Microgrid Testbed

Given the rapid growth in microgrid deployment and its associated cybersecurity risks, many stakeholders begin to recognize the importance of conducting close-to-real-world cyber exercises to train their workforce. In this paper, we present the design consideration and implementation details of a recent cyber exercise conducted on the Electric Power and Intelligent Control (EPIC) microgrid testbed located in Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The proposed cyber exercise is part of the Critical Infrastructure Security Showdown (CISS) event 2022 organized by the iTrust centre in SUTD. As part of the design and control team of this cyber exercise, we aim to provide the attackers (red team participants) with realistic attacking experiences that are close to real-world circumstances. In particular, exposing EPIC’s IT/OT infrastructure with realistic vulnerabilities that attackers can use to achieve a variety of attack objectives. Our proposed list of attack objectives form an attack blueprint that guides the attackers with interim attacking steps before achieving the ultimate goal.