Implementation of a HIDS platform for IoT Smart Inverters - Renewable Energy Systems
| Thesis type | Master Thesis |
| Supervisor | Marius Biebel |
| Starting date | As soon as possible |
| Skills | LaTeX, Git, JSON, Any programming language |
| Language | English (preferred), German |
| Industry cooperation | not possible |
| Publish date |
Problem and context
In recent years, the deployment of smart inverters has increased significantly, driven by the growing adoption of renewable energy sources and the need for grid modernization. While established energy generation and distribution systems have well-established security mechanisms based on defense-in-depth ICS principles, many modern IoT-based systems lack such protections. These systems are often built with a focus on cost reduction and designed to provide an all-in-one solution for multiple functionalities. This approach results in complex systems with large attack surfaces that are directly connected to the internet.
While a single smart inverter device is not considered critical infrastructure, a coordinated attack on an entire product family or fleet of devices could significantly impact power grid stability. Therefore, monitoring such devices for security incidents and anomalies is essential.
This thesis focuses on designing and implementing a Host-based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) platform for IoT smart inverters in renewable energy systems. The main challenges include implementing a lightweight system capable of running on resource-constrained embedded devices while maintaining effective intrusion detection capabilities. Additionally, the system must accommodate the heterogeneous nature of distributed energy resources, where manufacturers, operators, and monitoring systems are often different entities.
Potential implementation approaches include RFC-5424 and RFC-5425 for UDP-based syslog-inspired logging, and MQTT as a lightweight messaging protocol. For the central hub system that collects and analyzes data, an ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or similar platform could be deployed, extended with custom connectors for the specific protocols investigated in the thesis.
Goals
The goal of this thesis is to design and implement a proof-of-concept HIDS platform for distributed energy resource (DER) IoT smart inverters, demonstrating the system’s feasibility while evaluating its performance and detection capabilities.