Advanced Persistent Threats on Consumer Energy Resources in Decentralized Energy Systems

With the increased share of renewable energy sources in energy infrastructures worldwide, power grids are shifting toward decentralization, in which Consumer Energy Resources play an important role. However, due to their reliance on digitization and Internet connectivity, Consumer Energy Resources significantly broaden the attack surface on power grids. Coordinated cyberattacks from in particular Advanced Persistent Threats may cause not only economical but also societal impacts. In this paper, we first describe the capabilities of these attackers. Then we illustrate the most likely attack paths and analyze the potential impacts. Subsequently, we present some potentially promising countermeasures. We conclude this paper by raising several open questions for future work.