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Wind farm security: Attack surface, targets, scenarios and mitigation

Authors:
Jason Staggs
Jason Staggs
Jason Staggs
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David Ferlemann at University of Tulsa
David Ferlemann
Sujeet Shenoi at University of Tulsa
Sujeet Shenoi
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Abstract

As modern society grows more reliant on wind energy, wind farm deployments will become increasingly attractive targets for malicious entities. The geographic scale of wind farms, remoteness of assets, flat logical control networks and insecure control protocols expose wind farms to myriad threats. This paper attempts to clarify the gaps in the understanding of wind farm threats and their implications. The paper describes the anatomy of a generic wind farm and the attack vectors that can be leveraged to target its information technology, industrial control system and physical assets. It discusses attack scenarios involving unauthorized wind turbine control, wind turbine damage, wind farm disruption and damage, and substation disruption and damage. Additionally, the paper highlights mitigation techniques that provide robust security coverage and reduce the negative cyber and physical impacts. The attack surface, targets, scenarios and mitigation techniques presented in this paper are common across wind farm deployments. However, it is still possible to add details about the unique aspects of wind farm assets, configurations and operations in order to develop a holistic risk management program geared for a specific wind farm deployment.
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... These attacks compromise not only the cyber aspects of the system but also have significant repercussions on the physical layer. The stealthy and sophisticated nature of these cyber-attacks makes their detrimental effects more challenging to detect than standard operational faults [2,3]. In the absence of robust monitoring and protective measures, such cyber-attacks pose a severe risk to the security and availability of wind farms. ...
... Two primary methods dominate the field of cyber-attack and intrusion detection: signature-based and anomaly-based detection [2][3][4]. The former relies on identifying known patterns or "signatures" of attacks, necessitating a continuously updated database as new patterns emerge. ...
... Therefore, to enhance the detection of anomalies due to cyber-attacks, the residuals are subjected to further analysis using the MSD and LOESS statistical methods to refine the residuals [14]. The MSD is calculated in (2), and the regression weights for each data point in LOESS are expressed by: ...
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... 6). Generally speaking, beyond military and defense forces concerns, security risks exist for wind park infrastructures per se attributable to "cyber-physical threats" such as malicious control of a wind turbine as well as disruption in the industrial control system, which could even impact the physical parts of the turbine, and disruption in a wind park, which could cause direct physical damage to a wind turbine (Staggs et al., 2017). ...
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... This data is transmitted to a control center for monitoring and control purposes [8]. The control system can alter various turbine parameters like pitch and yaw of the turbine blades, it can also set the maximum rotor speed and can apply emergency breaks in case of fast winds [18]. In the case of floating wind turbines, the ballast tanks can also be controlled. ...
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Full-text available
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