Economic Impact Assessment of Denial-of-Service and Time-Delay Attacks on Advanced Metering Infrastructure
2026-08-10 • Cryptography and Security
Cryptography and Security
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied how cyberattacks like denial-of-service and time delay attacks affect communication in smart meter networks used in power systems. Using simulations, they found these attacks cause delays, data loss, and reduced reliability, which can mess up how energy demand is estimated. They also showed that these communication problems can lead to real money losses for energy providers, especially during expensive market times. For example, a half-second delay made communication much slower, and losing half the data packets caused many timeouts and poorer data quality.
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)Denial-of-Service (DoS)Time Delay Attacks (TDA)Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3)Smart metersNetwork latencyPacket lossEnergy demand estimationEconomic impactRound-trip time (RTT)
Authors
Lais Oliveira Krohl, Saurav Basnet, Ioannis Zografopoulos
Abstract
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) plays an important role in modern power systems by providing near real-time consumption data for operational planning and load estimation. Despite this, AMI communication networks are vulnerable to certain cyberattack types, such as denial-of-service (DoS) and time delay attacks (TDAs), which may compromise data availability. This paper evaluates the impact of these attack types on AMI communication using a Mininet-based simulation environment that implements a communication model inspired by the Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) for communication among smart meters, data concentrators, and utility systems. Different cyberattack scenarios are analyzed, including communication delay, packet loss, combined degradation rate (D_rate), and concentrator failure, to evaluate their effects on network performance and data availability. The results indicate increased latency, higher communication unavailability rates, and reduced data reliability under attack conditions. In addition, the study correlates how communication degradation can result in potential uncertainties in energy demand estimation and provides estimates of the associated financial impacts on energy procurement, using electricity pricing data from the Independent System Operator-New England (ISO-NE). The experimental results reveal that a 500 ms delay increased the average RTT (Round-trip time) from 0.22 ms to 69.5 ms, while a 50% packet loss scenario resulted in 87 timeout events and a 5.31% communication degradation rate. Under a regional-scale deployment of 10,000 smart meters, this degradation could cause an estimated economic impact of $1,009/day under normal market conditions and up to $5,097/day during high-price events.