How lightning could protect against cyber-criminals 

Side channel signals and bolts of lightning from distant storms could one day help prevent hackers from sabotaging electric power substations and other critical infrastructure, according to a new study.

Security personnel could analyze electromagnetic signals that substation components emit by using an independent monitoring system to tell if hackers are tampering with switches and transformers using remote equipment.

Background lightning signals from thousands of miles away would authenticate those signals, preventing malicious actors from injecting fake monitoring information into the system.

Researchers have tested the idea at substations with two different electric utilities, and with extensive modeling and simulation. They described the technique, known as radio frequency-based distributed intrusion detection system (RFDIDS), at the 2019 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego.

“We should be able to remotely detect any attack that is modifying the magnetic field around substation components,” says Raheem Beyah, professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and cofounder of Fortiphyd Logic, Inc. “We are using a physical phenomenon to determine whether a certain action at a substation has occurred or not.”

2015 attack

Opening substation breakers to cause a blackout is one potential power grid attack. In December 2015, attackers used that technique to shut off power to 230,000 people in the Ukraine. Attackers opened breakers in 30 substations and hacked into monitoring systems to convince power grid operators that the grid was operating normally. Topping that off, they also attacked call centers to prevent customers from telling operators what was happening.

“The electric power grid is difficult to secure because it is so massive,” Beyah says. “It provides an electrical connection from a generating station to the appliances in your home. Because of this electrical connection, there are many places where a hacker could potentially insert an attack. That’s why we need an independent way to know what’s happening on grid systems.”

The independent approach would use an antenna located in or near a substation to detect the unique radio-frequency “side channel” signatures the equipment produces. The monitoring would act independent of systems now used to monitor and control the grid.

“Without trusting anything at all on the grid, we can use an RF receiver to determine if an impulse occurred in the shape of an ‘open’ operation,” Beyah says. “The system operates at 60 Hertz, and there are few other systems that operate there, so we can be sure of what we’re monitoring.”

Lightning echoes

However, hackers might be able to figure out how to insert fake signals to hide their attacks. That’s where the lightning emissions known as “sferics” come in.

“When a lightning flash hits the ground, it forms an electrical path miles tall, potentially carrying hundreds of thousands of amps of current, so that makes for a really powerful antenna radiating energy,” says Morris Cohen, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Each flash creates signals in the very low frequency (VLF) band, which can reflect from the upper atmosphere to travel long distances.

“Signals from lightning can zigzag back and forth and make it all the way around the world,” Cohen says. “Lightning from South America, for example, is easily detectable in Atlanta. We’ve even seen lightning echo multiple times around the world.”

Security staff remotely monitoring substations would be able compare the lightning behind the 60 Hz substation signals to lightning data from other sources, such as one of the 70,000 or so other substations in the United States or a global lightning database. That would authenticate the information. Since lightning occurs more than three million times every day on average, there is plenty of opportunity to authenticate, he notes.

“Even if you could synthesize the RF receiver’s data feed digitally, generating something realistic would be difficult because the shape of the pulse from lightning detected by our receivers varies as a function of the distance from the lightning, the time of day, latitude, and more,” Cohen says. “It would take a lot of real-time computation and knowledge of sophisticated physics to synthesize the lightning signals.”

Critical power grid

Working with two different electric utilities, the researchers analyzed the RF signals produced when breakers were turned off for substation maintenance. They also used computer simulations to study a potential attack against the systems.

“The signal from a lightning stroke is very distinct—it is short, around a millisecond, and covers a huge frequency range,” Cohen says. “The only other process on Earth that is known to generate something similar is a nuclear explosion. The emissions from the power grid are very different and none of it looks like a pulse from lightning, so it is easy enough to separate the signals.”

The researchers filed a provisional patent on RFDIDS, and hope to further refine the security strategy, which is independent of equipment manufacturer. Beyah believes applications for remote monitoring of other RF-emitting devices could go beyond the power industry for remote monitoring of other RF-emitting devices. The system could tell transit operators if a train were present, for example.

“The power grid is our most critical piece of infrastructure,” Beyah says. “Nothing else matters if you don’t have electrical power.”