Smart Blockchain-based Control-data Protection Framework for Trustworthy Smart Grid Operations

Abstract

The critical nature of smart grids (SGs) attracts various network attacks and malicious manipulations. Existent SG solutions are less capable of ensuring secure and trustworthy operation. This is due to the large-scale nature of SGs and reliance on network protocols for trust management. A particular example of such severe attacks is the false data injection (FDI). FDI refers to a network attack, where meters' measurements are manipulated before being reported in such a way that the energy system takes flawed decisions. In this paper, we exploit the secure nature of blockchains to construct a data management framework based on public blockchain. Our framework enables trustworthy data storage, verification, and exchange between SG components and decision-makers. Our proposed system enables miners to invest their computational power to verify blockchain transactions in a fully distributed manner. The mining logic employs machine learning (ML) techniques to identify the locations of compromised meters in the network, which are responsible for generating FDI attacks. In return, miners receive virtual credit, which may be used to pay their electric bills. Our design circumvents single points of failure and intentional FDI attempts. Our numerical results compare the accuracy of three different ML-based mining logic techniques in two scenarios: focused and distributed FDI attacks for different attack levels. Finally, we proposed a majority-decision mining technique for the practical case of an unknown FDI attack level.