Cyber-Physical Systems Security—A Survey <s> 2) Smart Grids Vulnerabilities: a) SG V1, communication vulnerabilities in cybercomponents: <s> We're about to acquire a significant new cyber- vulnerability. The world's energy utilities are starting to install hundreds of millions of 'smart meters' which contain a remote off switch. Its main purpose is to ensure that customers who default on their payments can be switched remotely to a prepay tariff; secondary purposes include supporting interruptible tariffs and implementing rolling power cuts at times of supply shortage. The off switch creates information security problems of a kind, and on a scale, that the energy companies have not had to face before. From the viewpoint of a cyber attacker - whether a hostile government agency, a terrorist organisation or even a militant environmental group - the ideal attack on a target country is to interrupt its citizens' electricity supply. This is the cyber equivalent of a nuclear strike; when electricity stops, then pretty soon everything else does too. Until now, the only plausible ways to do that involved attacks on critical generation, transmission and distribution assets, which are increasingly well defended. Smart meters change the game. The combination of commands that will cause meters to interrupt the supply, of applets and software upgrades that run in the meters, and of cryptographic keys that are used to authenticate these commands and software changes, create a new strategic vulnerability, which we discuss in this paper. <s> BIB001 </s> Cyber-Physical Systems Security—A Survey <s> 2) Smart Grids Vulnerabilities: a) SG V1, communication vulnerabilities in cybercomponents: <s> Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition(SCADA) systems are deeply ingrained in the fabric of critical infrastructure sectors. These computerized real-time process control systems, over geographically dispersed continuous distribution operations, are increasingly subject to serious damage and disruption by cyber means due to their standardization and connectivity to other networks. However, SCADA systems generally have little protection from the escalating cyber threats. In order to understand the potential danger and to protect SCADA systems, in this paper, we highlight their difference from standard IT systems and present a set of security property goals. Furthermore, we focus on systematically identifying and classifying likely cyber attacks including cyber-induced cyber-physical attack son SCADA systems. Determined by the impact on control performance of SCADA systems, the attack categorization criteria highlights commonalities and important features of such attacks that define unique challenges posed to securing SCADA systems versus traditional Information Technology(IT) systems. <s> BIB002 </s> Cyber-Physical Systems Security—A Survey <s> 2) Smart Grids Vulnerabilities: a) SG V1, communication vulnerabilities in cybercomponents: <s> It is often appealing to assume that existing solutions can be directly applied to emerging engineering domains. Unfortunately, careful investigation of the unique challenges presented by new domains exposes its idiosyncrasies, thus often requiring new approaches and solutions. In this paper, we argue that the “smart” grid, replacing its incredibly successful and reliable predecessor, poses a series of new security challenges, among others, that require novel approaches to the field of cyber security. We will call this new field cyber-physical security. The tight coupling between information and communication technologies and physical systems introduces new security concerns, requiring a rethinking of the commonly used objectives and methods. Existing security approaches are either inapplicable, not viable, insufficiently scalable, incompatible, or simply inadequate to address the challenges posed by highly complex environments such as the smart grid. A concerted effort by the entire industry, the research community, and the policy makers is required to achieve the vision of a secure smart grid infrastructure. <s> BIB003
The smart grid's information infrastructure relies on a few of standardized Internet protocols with known vulnerabilities that could be used to launch attacks on the grid. TCP/IP is used for general-purpose connection to the Internet and is not supposed to connect to control centers. However, Internet-faced networks are sometimes connected, directly or indirectly, to the smart grids' control centers due to a network misconfiguration  . This connectivity itself is considered a vulnerability, let alone vulnerabilities in the open protocols. In addition, ICCP, which is the standardized protocol for data exchange between control centers, has a critical buffer overflow vulnerability BIB002 . b) SG V2, software vulnerabilities: Almost the same software vulnerabilities in ICS hold in smart grids with others that are smart grids-specific. For example, widespread smart meters that are remotely upgradeable, inviting a critical vulnerability. An attacker can make use of such a feature to cause blackouts by controlling the meters, either from the control center, or the meters individually. This vulnerability can also be exploited by a software bug BIB001 . The grids' components now become more accessible in every household, and hence provide a potential access point for malicious attackers BIB003 . Some vendors leave backdoors in smart meters. Santamarta  was able to discover a backdoor in some smart meters that would result in full control of the meter, including pricing modifications. In addition, some smart meters can be connected to via Telenet protocol. This vulnerability can also be exploited to affect other smart meters in the grid to launch coordinated attacks.