The digitization and decentralization of the electric power grid are key thrusts for an economically and environmentally sustainable future. Towards this goal, distributed energy resources (DER), including rooftop solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicles, etc., are becoming ubiquitous in power systems. Power utilities benefit from DERs as they minimize operational costs; at the same time, DERs grant users and aggregators control over the power they produce and consume. DERs are interconnected, interoperable, and support remotely controllable features, thus, their cybersecurity is of cardinal importance. DER communication dependencies and the diversity of DER architectures widen the threat surface and aggravate the cybersecurity posture of power systems. In this work, we focus on security oversights that reside in the cyber and physical layers of DERs and can jeopardize grid operations. Existing works have underlined the impact of cyberattacks targeting DER assets, however, they either focus on specific system components (e.g., communication protocols), do not consider the mission-critical objectives of DERs, or neglect the adversarial perspective (e.g., adversary/attack models) altogether. To address these omissions, we comprehensively analyze adversarial capabilities and objectives when manipulating DER assets, and then present how protocol and device-level vulnerabilities can materialize into cyberattacks impacting power system operations. Finally, we provide mitigation strategies to thwart adversaries and directions for future DER cybersecurity research.

翻译：电力系统的数字化与去中心化是实现经济和环境可持续发展的关键推动力。为实现这一目标，分布式能源资源（DER），包括屋顶太阳能电池板、电池储能、电动汽车等，在电力系统中日益普及。电力公用事业从DER中获益，因其能最小化运营成本；同时，DER赋予用户和聚合商对自身生产和消耗电力的控制权。DER具有互连性、互操作性，并支持远程可控功能，因此其网络安全至关重要。DER的通信依赖性及其架构的多样性扩大了威胁面，加剧了电力系统的网络安全态势。在本研究中，我们聚焦于DER的物理层与网络层中可能危及电网运行的安全疏漏。现有工作已强调了针对DER资产的网络攻击影响，但它们或仅关注特定系统组件（如通信协议），未考虑DER的关键任务目标，或完全忽略敌手视角（如敌手/攻击模型）。为弥补这些不足，我们全面分析了操控DER资产时的敌手能力与目标，进而阐述了协议级和设备级脆弱性如何具体化为影响电力系统运行的网络攻击。最后，我们提供了挫败敌手的缓解策略及未来DER网络安全研究的方向。