False Load Attack to Smart Meters by Synchronously Switching Power Circuits

摘要

In the electric energy metering process, current and voltage are sampled periodically and simultaneously, and then used to calculate the energy consumption. This paper presents a simple yet powerful attack to the above metering mechanism such that the calculated energy consumption is made far away from the actual one. Specifically, an adversary switches on/off the power circuit at the meter's sampling rate. If the meter samples the circuit at the circuit-off (or circuit-on) time, the measured energy consumption is much lower (or higher respectively) than the actual one. Unlike the state-of-the-art false load injection attacks, the present attack is immune to the well-known cryptographical countermeasure that builds a secure and time-stamped channel between the meter and the central system. We implemented a low-cost device to attack a simulated electric energy meter. According to the experiment results, the attack method is effective. Moreover, we propose a countermeasure on the present attack and demonstrate its effectiveness.