IoT Skimmer: Energy Market Manipulation through High-Wattage IoT Botnets
Tohid Shekhari, and Professor Raheem Beyah of the Georgia Institute of Technology, share their research showing how an "IoT Skimmer" – a massive botnet consisting of thousands of connected high-wattage IoT devices and appliances, such as connected refrigerators, air conditioners and heaters, could cause sufficient demand-side power fluctuations to influence energy prices and create financial damage by targeting utility firms.
Their research found that an increase or decrease of only 1% of power consumption is sufficient to manipulate prices and would be very difficult to detect. Malicious actors to whom these tactics could appeal include competitive companies seeking to financially damage another utility, nation-states wanting to cause economic disruption, and financial market profiteers.
This talk includes information of past attacks on electrical grids and manipulation of electric markets as well as background on power grid design & functionality, electricity markets, IoT botnets and known botnet attacks, analysis of the threat model and attack feasibility, potential stealth strategies of attackers, and available countermeasures.
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Speakers:
Professor Raheem Beyah, Executive Director of the Online Masters in Cybersecurity program and Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research at Georgia Institute of Technology as well as founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fortiphyd Logic, has built and deployed novel cybersecurity solutions throughout his professional career.
Tohid Shekari is currently pursuing a PhD degree in ECE and MSc in Cybersecurity with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. His current research interests include cyber-physical system security, cybersecurity in power systems, intrusion detection in power substations, power system resilience, and power system operation.