IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2021 - 76

White Hot
by Robert V. White
Is Your Power Supply
Hacker Proof?
I
t is a sad fact that our digital connected
world is under constant
attack from malicious parties. Most
of the time those bad actors are trying
to steal money through fraud or extortion
(ransomware attacks). Some of
those malicious actors though have a
bigger goal of attacking or terrorizing a
nation by disrupting or crippling critical
infrastructure such as power generation,
power distribution, fuel pipelines,
water plants, and even hospitals.
We are in an age where every connected
device must have the digital equivalents
of Star Trek's deflector shields to
protect our money, our data, and our
critical services.
As power electronics has become
an important part of the power grid
manufacturers of equipment that supports
the grid, such as inverters taking
the output of solar panels and
suppling a local microgrid, now have
to be experts in cybersecurity. This is
not new. The editor of this magazine,
A shok Bindra, wrote about this in the
September 2017 issue (Securing the
Power Grid-Protecting smart grids
and connected power systems from
cyberattacks). Searching the IEEE
Xplore digital library using terms like
" microgrid and cybersecurity " or
" microgrid and cyberattack " yields
thousands of papers and articles.
But what about lower level dc power
supplies used in servers, industrial
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2021.3124109
Date of current version: 16 December 2021
equipment, medical equipment and
other similar applications? Do the
designers of this kind of power supply
need to be concerned with cybersecurity.
Before I dive into that question I
would like to review a few basics of
digital and communications security.
There are a number of different
frameworks for evaluating the security
of digital systems. One is the Confidentiality,
In te grity, and Availability (CIA)
framework (and it has nothing to
do with the United
States intelligence
agency). Among all
the frameworks there
are common concepts
and metrics.
All frameworks
include the concept
of " authentication. "
Authentication means
that a device receiving
a message or
transmission must be
able to know that the
sender is authorized
to communicate with
the receiver. The most
common form of au -
The second common concept is
authenticity, validity, or integrity.
This means that the message was
not altered after being transmitted.
There are various checksum methods
that add additional
information
to a message to detect bits that are
altered ( " flipped " ) due to noise but
this does not guard against the
actions of a malicious actor. Again to
assure the message has not been
altered requires encryption.
The third common
As power electronics has
become an important
part of the power grid
manufacturers of
equipment that
supports the grid, such
as inverters taking the
output of solar panels
and suppling a local
microgrid, now have
to be experts in
cybersecurity.
thentication is a password, which to be
secure must be encrypted. Today, a
common form of authentication in -
volves " two factors " . Two factor authentication
requires a separate, independent
channel of communication so
that the receiver can query the sender
to confirm that it actually is attempting
to communicate.
76 IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE z December 2021
concept is accessibility.
A sender must
be able to send a
message or transmi
ssion when it
needs to be sent. If a
malicious actor has
gained control of the
communications
path and is flooding
the path with fake
messages it prevents
other devices
from communicating
in a timely manner
and perhaps not at
all. On the internet,
this is known as a " denial of service "
(DoS) attack.
These three concepts all relate to
being able to securely transmit a message
from one device to another.
Another aspect of security is to
prevent unauthorized monitoring
(continued on page 70)
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2021

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