English

Quantifying Cyber-Vulnerability in Power Electronics Systems via an Impedance-Based Attack Reachable Domain

Systems and Control 2026-05-15 v1 Artificial Intelligence Systems and Control

Abstract

Power electronics systems are increasingly exposed to cyber threats due to their integration with digital controllers and communication networks. However, an attacker-oriented metric is still lacking to quantify the extent to which a node can be pushed toward instability within a privilege-constrained action space. This letter proposes an impedance-based Attack Reachable Domain (ARD) framework that maps feasible adversarial actions to critical-eigenvalue migration through impedance reshaping. Based on the ARD, an Attack Penetration Index is defined to quantify node-level cyber-vulnerability by jointly characterizing the penetration of the nominal stability margin and the accessibility of successful destabilizing attacks within a privilege-constrained action space. To make the proposed assessment computable when inverter models are unavailable, a practical gray-box workflow is further established by integrating existing impedance identification and differentiable surrogate tools. Case studies on a 4-bus system and a modified IEEE 39-bus system show that coordinated cross-layer manipulations are markedly more damaging than isolated single-layer attacks, and that the proposed metric reveals vulnerability patterns that cannot be inferred from grid-strength indicators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.14502,
  title  = {Quantifying Cyber-Vulnerability in Power Electronics Systems via an Impedance-Based Attack Reachable Domain},
  author = {Hongwei Zhen and Ze Yu and Xin Xiang and Wuhua Li and Mingyang Sun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.14502},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-22T07:11:49.463Z