Introduction to Cyber-Warfare - Proiect SEMPER FIDELIS

DESTROYING A GENERATOR WITH A CYBER ATTACK: THE AURORA TEST215Point at which breaker opensVoltageGeneratorGridTolerance time intervalPoint at which breaker closesTimeFIGURE 12.2 Notional graph displaying voltage as a function of time for a generator and the power grid based onthe results of Wei et al. Note that the generator and grid must be matched with respect to frequency, voltage, andphase rotation. The opening of the breaker—followed by a closing—moves the generator out of sync with the powergrid. However, this occurs within a certain permissible time tolerance (designed to prevent premature separation ofthe generator from the grid). Repeated opening and closing of the breaker result in severe stress on the shaft of therotator in the generator—drastically shortening its lifespan.iterations, the cumulative stress on the shaft leads to failure. In the Aurora Test, after 13 iterations,the generator began to vibrate abnormally. After 22 iterations, smoke emerged 9 .Implementing an Aurora-Style AttackThe Idaho National Labs test is revealing, but may lead to wonder if an attack of this type ispossible in the real world. While it is true that the test—particularly the demonstration videoreleased to the Associated Press—did not include certain security measures relatively commonto this type of generator (i.e., vibration monitoring limit switches, over-speed limitation on thediesel engine, synchronization check on the tie breaker were all disabled during the test andsynchronization check on the protective relay was disabled during the video demonstration). 10However, with knowledge of the computer network and power generator, the attack is still possible.Mark Zeller, an engineer with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories described severalstrategies an attacker would consider at the IEEE Conference for Protective Relay Engineers 11 :1. Physical attack: The adversary manually sabotages the power generator by opening andclosing the breaker. Although such a method would be less than sophisticated if repeatedand/or done at random intervals, it could result in serious harm to the machine.