S-GoSV: Framework for generating secure IEC 61850 GOOSE and sample value messages

Abstract

Standardized communication plays an important role in substation automation system (SAS). IEC 61850 is a de-facto standard in SAS. It facilitates smooth communication between different devices located in the substation by achieving interoperability. Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) and Sample Value (SV) messages developed according to IEC 61850 enable efficient monitoring and operation control of SAS. IEC 61850 is very popular due to its flexible and robust modeling. As the number of critical infrastructures that employed IEC 61850 increases, it is important to study cybersecurity aspects as well. To this end, this paper develops a software framework, S-GoSV (Secure GOOSE and SV), that generates custom GOOSE and Sample Value messages. Furthermore, security features are added to protect them from different security attacks within a substation. IEC 62351-6 specifies digital signatures to achieve node authentication and messages integrity. Therefore, S-GoSV implements RSASSA-PKCS1-v1-5 digital signature algorithm based on RFC 2313. Performance studies show that digital signature algorithms based on RSA signing and verification take long times and do not conform to timing requirements stipulated by IEC 61850 for power system communication. To address this, Message Authentication Code (MAC) based digital signature algorithm, Keyed Hash-Message Authentication Code- Secure Hash Algorithm (HMAC-SHA256), is additionally implemented in S-GoSV framework for securing GOOSE messages.