Threat Analysis of BlackEnergy Malware for Synchrophasor based Real-time Control and Monitoring in Smart Grid

TLDR

BlackEnergy malware, originally a simple DDoS platform, has evolved into a sophisticated plug‑in architecture with a persistent core and modules for DDoS, spamming, info‑stealing, remote access, and boot‑sector formatting, and has been involved in high‑profile cyber‑physical attacks such as the 2015 Ukraine power grid incident. This paper investigates the evolution of BlackEnergy and its cyber‑attack capabilities, and examines protection strategies for detecting and preventing BlackEnergy‑based cyber‑physical attacks on industrial control systems. The authors present a basic cyber‑attack model for targeting industrial control systems, analyze threats to synchrophasor‑based smart‑grid systems using IEEE C37.118 and IEC 61850‑90‑5 standards, and explore attack scenarios exploiting vulnerabilities in these communication protocols.

Abstract

The BlackEnergy malware targeting critical infrastructures has a long history. It evolved over time from a simple DDoS platform to a quite sophisticated plug-in based malware. The plug-in architecture has a persistent malware core with easily installable attack specific modules for DDoS, spamming, info-stealing, remote access, boot-sector formatting etc. BlackEnergy has been involved in several high profile cyber physical attacks including the recent Ukraine power grid attack in December 2015. This paper investigates the evolution of BlackEnergy and its cyber attack capabilities. It presents a basic cyber attack model used by BlackEnergy for targeting industrial control systems. In particular, the paper analyzes cyber threats of BlackEnergy for synchrophasor based systems which are used for real-time control and monitoring functionalities in smart grid. Several BlackEnergy based attack scenarios have been investigated by exploiting the vulnerabilities in two widely used synchrophasor communication standards: (i) IEEE C37.118 and (ii) IEC 61850-90-5. Further, the paper also investigates protection strategies for detection and prevention of BlackEnergy based cyber physical attacks.