BT-MTD: Bus Traversal-based Moving Target Defense for Smart Grid

2026-06-12

AI Summary

This study addresses the low efficiency of defending against stealthy attacks in smart grids by proposing a bus-traversal-driven moving target defense (BT-MTD) approach. By theoretically analyzing the admittance matrix, the method identifies and eliminates ineffective branch operations, dynamically adjusting admittance only on critical branches. It further introduces an innovative bus-guided graph traversal mechanism that efficiently generates secure perturbation strategies according to analytical criteria. Experimental evaluations on IEEE standard test systems demonstrate that BT-MTD significantly outperforms four existing MTD strategies in terms of defense effectiveness, execution efficiency, and computational overhead.

Abstract

Moving Target Defense (MTD) is a proactive security strategy designed to enhance cyber-resilience by dynamically altering system parameters, thereby preventing adversaries from acquiring the critical information needed to execute stealth attacks. In this paper, we consider the case in which the operator modifies the admittance of branches to enable MTD, and focus on the problem of effectively protecting the system with fewer number of branch admittance modifications and shorter computational time. Specifically, we identify the ineffectual branches whose admittance modification do not contribute to the improvement of MTD effectiveness via theoretical analysis. Building on these insights, we propose the Bus Traversal-based MTD (BT-MTD), which is a bus-oriented algorithm that traverses over the buses of the network according to analytically derived guidelines. The performance of the BT-MTD is evaluated and compared with four existing strategies on standard IEEE test systems, demonstrating its robustness and superior performance in effectiveness, efficiency, and computational cost. The code of BT-MTD is available at: https://github.com/YJY101/BT-MTD.

Problem

• Moving Target Defense
• Smart Grid
• Branch Admittance
• Cyber-resilience
• Stealth Attacks

Innovation

• Moving Target Defense
• Bus Traversal
• Admittance Modification
• Smart Grid Security
• Cyber-Resilience