Newswise — Shiyan Hu, a computer engineer at Michigan Technological University, wants to stop making cybersecurity an afterthought. Given the recent blackout in Ukraine, caused by a power grid hack, Hu says now is the time to consider weaknesses in energy infrastructure and to shore up the system’s defenses.
His recent works titled “Preventive Maintenance for Advanced Metering Infrastructure Against Malware Propagation” and “Leveraging Strategic Detection Techniques for Smart Home Pricing Cyberattacks” demonstrated that hacking the power grid was not only possible, but could lead to major blackouts like December’s attacks in Ukraine. And the country is not alone in its vulnerability.
“Even in the US, we have significant risk in our infrastructure,” Hu says. “We lack the defense tech to stop most malware attacks on the power grid.”
In Hu’s lab, he and his students develop algorithms to protect smart energy systems. Hu says that eventually both software and hardware fixes—like secure communication chips to encode transmitted information—will need to be put in place. Currently, the biggest weaknesses are still in industry software, but smart meters and other smart home feature are at risk as well, and require a cross-layer security solution.
Hu is an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, where he leads the IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems and the Michigan Tech Cyber-Physical System Research Group. He has been at Stanford University as a visiting professor and also previously at IBM Research in Austin. Hu is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and he has delivered the talk titled “Smart Home Cybersecurity: Threat and Defense in a Cyber-Physical Systems” worldwide.
RSS