Title: Vulnerability considerations for power line communication's supervisory control and data acquisition

Authors: Ali Hosseinpournajarkolaei; Hamid Jahankhani; Amin Hosseinian-Far

Addresses: School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering, University of East London, Docklands Campus, 4-6 University Way, E16 2RD, London, UK ' Williams College, Duncan House, High Street Stratford, E15 2JB, London, UK ' Williams College, Duncan House, High Street Stratford, E15 2JB, London, UK

Abstract: Due to the increasing importance of communication networking, the power line (PL) channel has been considered as a good candidate for the communication medium. Power line communications (PLC) term stands for the technologies for the data communication over the electrical power supply network. The PL channels were not designed to transmit high speed data; therefore, they exhibit hostile medium for communication signal transmission. There are many factors such as noises, attenuation, distance, etc. affecting the quality of the transmission over PL channels. This paper presents PL model in the first sections of the work. Then it covers the security assessment of the PL system in the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) context.

Keywords: power line communications; PLC; SCADA security; smart metering; system of systems; SoS; narrowband technology; vulnerability; supervisory control; data acquisition; security assessment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2014.063108

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2014 Vol.6 No.2, pp.104 - 114

Received: 28 Sep 2013
Accepted: 22 Oct 2013
Published online: 30 Jul 2014 *

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