A Real-Time Cyber-Physical Simulation Testbed for Cybersecurity Assessment of Large-Scale Power Systems

Abstract

In this paper, a real-time cyber-physical simulation (RTCPS) testbed is developed to assess the cybersecurity of large-scale power systems. The simulation testbed includes real-time simulations of power grids and communication networks, allowing for the integration of physical hardware and providing a realistic representation of power system operations. Real-time simulators from OPAL-RT and RTDS technologies are used to simulate power grids, whereas EXata network modeling is used to emulate the communication network in real time. The communication network within the testbed includes information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) systems, which enable a comprehensive assessment of the impact of cybersecurity issues on power systems. Since the developed simulation testbed comprises various simulation tools, multiple scripts are developed to automate the simulation and launch cyber attacks on communication networks. These scripts allow the testbed to simulate a large number of scenarios with minimal effort, which is crucial in collecting data for training machine learning models. Various realistic attacks on the IT and OT networks, including phishing email attack, steal credentials, denial of service, remote access attack, and man-in-the-middle attack will be presented. The setup of the RTCPS testbed for a simple scenario is described, allowing researchers to understand and reproduce the simulation. Furthermore, an additional setup for a large-scale cyber-physical simulation scenario is presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the RTCPS testbed.