Data framing attack on state estimation with unknown network parameters

A data framing attack is presented to exploit the bad data detection and identification mechanisms at a typical ISO/RTO control center. In particular, the proposed attack frames normal meters as sources of bad data and causes the control center to remove useful measurements from the framed meters. The proposed attack uses subspace information of power system measurements; neither the network topology nor the network parameters are required for constructing the attack. It is shown that the proposed attack is capable of perturbing the power system state estimate by an arbitrary degree using only half of the critical measurements. Implications of this attack on power system operations are discussed, and the attack performance is evaluated using benchmark systems.