Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is one of the most popular public key systems in recent years due to its both high security and low resource consumption. Thus, ECC is more appropriate for Internet applications of Things, which are mainly involved with limited resources. However, non-invasive side channel Attacks (SCAs) are considered as a major threat to ECC systems. In this paper, we design a processor for the ECC in the binary field, resistant to differential Power Attacks (DPA). The main operations in this architecture are randomized Montgomery multiplication and division units, which make it impossible to create DPAs by involving a random number in the calculation process. The goal is to accelerate the operation by opening the loops in the Montgomery randomized multiplication/division units, and accordingly, bit-parallel design instead of bit serial design. The results show that, despite the complexity of the logic in the two/three-bit processing versions, the speed is significantly improved by accepting a slight increasing in the area resource. Further, our design is flexible where in the top-level module, depending on the area-speed trade-off, a variety of multiplier and divisor units can be selected. The FPGA evaluations show that in terms of Time×Slice metric, the 2-bit divider/3-bit multiplier version of our architecture leads to 40% improvement over the best previous work. Further, by duplicating the divider and multiplier modules along the bit-parallel architecture this gain can reach to 50%. In terms of operation speed, our design versions are faster than previous work by a factor of 1. 87 and 3. 29. Furthermore, ASIC evaluations in term of Time×Area metric, indicate that deploying 2-bit multiplier leads to 19% gain relative to previous well-known work. Moreover, duplication of modules along with bit-paralleling amplifies the overall gain up to 36%.

Side-channel Analysis methods can reveal the secret information of digital electronic systems by analyzing the dependency between the Power consumption of implemented cryptographic algorithms and the secret data. Recent studies show that it is possible to gather information about Power consumption from FPGAs without any physical access. High flexibilities of modern FPGAs cause that they are used for cloud accelerator in Platform as a Service (PaaS) system; however, new serious vulnerabilities emerged for these platforms. Although there are some reports about how switching activities from one region of FPGA affect other regions, details of this technique are not analyzed. In this paper, we analyzed the strength of this kind of attack and examined the impact of geometrical and electrical parameters of the victim/attacker modules on the efficiency of this attack. We utilized a Zynq-based Xilinx platform as the device under attack. Experimental results and analyses show that the distance between the victim module and the sensor modules is not the only effective parameter on the quality of attack; the influence of the relational location of victim/attacker modules could be more considerable on the quality of attack. Results of this Analysis can help the FPGA manufacturer and IP developers to protect their systems against this serious attack.

Introduction Monitoring and prediction of hydrologic droughts and determining the onset and duration of drought spells have an important role in water resources management and planning to reduce the adverse effects of drought. In the present study the characteristics of hydrological drought in daily discharge time series from 20 hydrometric stations in Golestan Province have been analyzed. Matherials & Methods: In this study, the onset and end of drought periods, mean discharge, effective discharge and threshold level were calculated and then sequence number of 1 to 30-month durations were determined. According to the results of Power Laws Analysis, the intensity and duration patterns of hydrological drought periods were distinguished. The results specified an inverse relationship between the intensity and duration of wet and dry spells. The highest severity of dry spell is related to Nodeh station (Line slope=-0. 26) and the highest intensity of wet spell was observed in Ramian station (Line slope =-0. 28) which indicated the stability of dry and wet river flow regimes in Nodeh and Ramian stations. Also, the longest durations of dry and wet periods were determined for the Aghghala (32. 89) and Basirabad (16. 29) stations, respectively, which represents the average maximum probable durations. Discussion of Results & Conclusions: The proximity, closeness to a straight line or parallel lines without intersection proved the homogeneity regime of wet-dry spells in the Gorganroud watershed. Analysis of wet-dry spells using the Power Laws technique provides a basis to determine the flow regime, severity and duration of hydrological drought.

In today's societies, the Power systems despite their vast developments as critical infrastructures (CI), are exposed to numerous natural and unnatural threats. In the past, Power grids were designed only to withstand typical events which would have predictable probabilities. However, nowadays events with low probabilities and high effects are considered a major challenge. Power grids are expected to have the necessary flexibility in the face of such events and should not be disrupted quickly. This demonstrates the concept of resilience. In this article the resilience enhancement strategies, and in particular, the undergrounding as the best solution, are examined considering focused physical Attacks. Taking budget constraints into account, the proposed algorithm determines the priorities of lines and buses to be undergrounded. This algorithm considers two approaches of the contingency Analysis, namely the experts views and the index of load loss, in order to get the best choices for undergrounding. It should be noted that in this paper the static status of the grid is considered. Finally, the proposed method is implemented on the IEEE 39-bus test grid using Digsilent software, and the results are presented and discussed to evaluate the capabilities of the proposed method.

In this paper, a novel risk-based, two-objective (technical and economical) optimal reactive Power dispatch method in a wind-integrated Power system is proposed which is more consistent with operational criteria.  The technical objective includes the minimization of the new voltage instability risk index. The economical objective includes cost minimization of reactive Power generation and active Power loss. The proposed voltage instability risk employs a hybrid possibilistic (Delphi-Fuzzy)-probabilistic approach that takes into consideration the operator’s experience, the wind speed and demand forecast uncertainties when quantifying the risk index. The decision variables are the reactive Power resources of the system. To solve the problem, the modified multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm with sine and cosine acceleration coefficients is utilized. The method is implemented on the modified IEEE 30-bus system. The proposed method is compared with those in the previously published literature, and the results confirm that the proposed risk index is better at estimating the voltage instability risk of the system, especially in cases with severe impact and low probability. In addition, according to the simulation results compared to typical security-based planning, the proposed risk-based planning may increase the security and economy of the system due to better utilization of system resources.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks are among the primary concerns in internet security today. Machine learning can be exploited to detect such Attacks. In this paper, a multi-layer perceptron model is proposed and implemented using deep machine learning to distinguish between malicious and normal traffic based on their behavioral patterns. The proposed model is trained and tested using the CICDDoS2019 dataset. To remove irrelevant and redundant data from the dataset and increase learning accuracy, feature selection is used to select and extract the most effective features that allow us to detect these Attacks. Moreover, we use the grid search algorithm to acquire optimum values of the model’s hyperparameters among the parameters’ space. In addition, the sensitivity of accuracy of the model to variations of an input parameter is analyzed. Finally, the effectiveness of the presented model is validated in comparison with some state-of-the-art works.

Protective systems constitute the most vital defensive element of Power networks against unusual conditions. Therefore, any malfunction caused by cyber-Attacks may cause huge consequences for Power networks such as widespread blackouts. Among the most critical protective systems vulnerable to cyber intrusions are generator protection, transmission lines, and transformers. Cyber sabotages can be mitigated through strategic proceedings to reduce their impact on the network. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the methods of strengthening the protection system against cyber-Attacks, given the importance of Power network protection systems. For this purpose, in the first step, protection-based methods for strengthening the Power network against cyber-Attacks are presented. Then, in the second step, detection-based methods are described to reveal a possible cyber-attack. Since there is no definite guarantee against cyber intrusions, it is possible to prevent the progress of the attack by using attack detection methods. To this end, two types of data-based and model-based algorithms are utilized. In data-based algorithms, network knowledge and information can be optimally used to detect the conditions of cyber-attack compared to the conditions without cyber-attack. In model-based algorithms, parameters of the network are estimated by executing state estimation algorithms based on system relations. Then, data manipulation and cyber intrusions are detected despite the discrepancy between the estimated values and the measured values. Consequently, the use of defense and detection methods to deal with cyber intrusion leads to an increase in the cyber security of the Power grid protection system. In this regard, it is very important to use various defense and detection algorithms in combating cyber-Attacks.

Power grid is one of the most important infrastructure of any society on which other infrastructures depend. Studies show that the false data injection cyberattack can cause transmission lines to overload. Usually, the Power grid is capable of responding to the natural overloads of transmission lines, but if a cyberattack is accompanied by a targeted physical attack, the overload of transmission lines can become out of control, and consecutive outages can occur in the Power grid’s transmission lines. This situation eventually leads to local or nationwide blackouts of the Power grid. To confront the overload of transmission lines, the Power grid’s operator removes the overloads by taking corrective measures such as using the upward and downward reserve Power as well as load shedding. In this paper, we first show how a simultaneous cyber-physical attack can increase the amount of load shedding. Then a model based on game theory is presented to plan the load dispatch of the grid so that the operator can repel the cyber-physical attack with the lowest possible cost using corrective measures. The proposed model is simulated on a 5-bus test network and the results are analyzed.

Graphite bombs are modern and non-destructive weapons causing wide area blackouts in Power systems by applying short circuit faults. In this paper, a special protection scheme is presented to deal with graphite bombs and prevent blackouts. In this method, substations are categorized according to the system response to their outage event. In next stage, special protection scheme for each group is designed according to the available communication infrastructure. Load shedding, islanding, generation trip are the methods utilized along each other to tackle blackouts. The proposed methods are tested on IEEE 39 bus test system in different operation scenarios. Simulation results prove the validity of the proposed method in dealing with graphite Attacks.

Nowadays, the stable operation of urban infrastructure is of a lot of importance. The operation of infrastructure systems is often dependent to each other. One of the important concepts that is seriously affected by the dependence of such systems is resilience aganist extreme events. This paper proposes a comprehensive model for the resilience of critical infrastructures, especially the electrical grid and its associated infrastructure, faced with the damage caused by different Attacks. In this model, three aspects of infrastructure are addressed: physical, human and cyber, each of which is defined based on the services they can provide. This modeling is developed based on the definition of a geometric graph. Since one of the most important infrastructures related to the electrical network, which is also a vital load for it, is the communication network, the proposed model is discussed in terms of the telecommunication system. This study focuses on the multi-time and multi-domain performance of the infrastructure, and considers the dynamics of the Power system. Finally, in order to evaluate the proposed method, a numerical study is presented in which the case study is simulated using MATLAB software.