Security Analysis of Smart Grid Cyber Physical Infrastructures Using Game Theoretic Simulation

Cyber physical computing infrastructures typically consist of a number of interconnected sites including both cyber and physical components. In this analysis we studied the various types and frequency of attacks that may be levied on smart grid cyber physical systems. Our information security analysis utilized a dynamic Agent Based Game Theoretic (ABGT) simulation. Such simulations can be verified using a closed form game theory analytic approach to explore larger scale, real world scenarios involving multiple attackers, defenders, and information assets. We concentrated our study on the electric sector failure scenarios from the NESCOR Working Group Study. We extracted four generic failure scenarios and grouped them into three specific threat categories (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) to the system. These specific failure scenarios serve as a demonstration of our simulation. The analysis using our ABGT simulation demonstrates how to model the electric sector functional domain using a set of rationalized game theoretic rules decomposed from the failure scenarios in terms of how those scenarios might impact the cyber physical infrastructure network with respect to CIA.