Identifying Counterfeit Smart Grid Devices: A Lightweight System Level Framework

The use of counterfeit smart grid devices throughout the smart grid communication infrastructure represents a real problem. Hence, monitoring and early detection of counterfeit smart grid devices is critical for protecting smart grid's components and data. To address these concerns, in this paper, we introduce a novel system level approach to identify counterfeit smart grid devices. Specifically, our approach is a configurable framework that combines system and function call tracing techniques and statistical analysis to detect counterfeit smart grid devices based on their behavioural characteristics. Moreover, we measure the efficacy of our framework with a realistic testbed that includes both resource-limited and resource-rich counterfeit devices. In total, we analyze six different counterfeit devices in our testbed. The devices communicate via an open source version of the IEC61850 protocol suite (i.e., libiec61850). Experimental results reveal an excellent rate on the detection of smart grid counterfeit devices. Finally, the performance analysis demonstrates that the use of the proposed framework has minimal overhead on the smart grid devices' computing resources.