"Simple Hardware to Defend Microgrid Attacks"

Small-scale renewable energy systems have the advantage of being able to be set up into networks that, when necessary, can run independently of the primary electric grid. KAUST researchers are now creating strategies to defend these networks, known as microgrids, from cyberattacks. Microgrids are prime targets for community-disrupting cyberattacks due to their relative isolation and simplicity. In their efforts to improve microgrid security, the team used Hardware Performance Counters (HPCs), which are special registers embedded in most computers that monitor events such as how many times a specific command has been executed. They used HPCs to detect code patterns indicating malicious code execution on their devices, specifically the embedded controllers of solar inverters, which convert the output of solar photovoltaic panels into usable power for consumers. For cost reasons, solar inverter controllers do not include HPCs. Therefore, the researchers developed custom HPCs that could monitor inverter commands without interfering with their primary function of converting solar energy to electricity. The team included time series classifiers, which are algorithms that correlate potentially malicious command combinations with the time sequence of HPC firing events, thus adding another layer of security. They were able to detect malware in inverter controllers with more than 97 percent accuracy using a classifier trained on a single custom-built HPC, achieving their original goal of a low-cost and low-complexity defense countermeasure. This article continues to discuss the method devised by KAUST researchers to protect microgrids using low-cost hardware-based malware detection mechanisms.

KAUST Discovery reports "Simple Hardware to Defend Microgrid Attacks"