High risk regional load attacks in smart grids

This letter develops a high-risk regional load attack mechanism in smart grids with incomplete network information. Different from previous research, this attack mechanism enables an attacker to launch a regional load attack with network information about an arbitrary attack region, while minimising the deviation in corrupted data to enhance the stealth of this attack. Such an attack only corrupts a limited number of loads while still overloading multiple lines within a targeted attack region, resulting in significant impacts on smart grids. Case studies conducted on two modified IEEE test systems validate the effectiveness of our proposed attack mechanism and pave the foundation for the future development of practical defensive strategies.