Optimal Synergistic Attack Strategy Targeting Energy Storage and Load Sides in Integrated Energy Systems

With the large-scale integration of distributed energy resources, modern energy systems are becoming increasingly dependent on communication networks for monitoring and control. This growing reliance exposes integrated energy systems (IESs) to potential cyber threats, as attackers may exploit vulnerabilities in communication protocols to disrupt system operation. However, most existing studies primarily investigate the stable operation of electro–thermal coupled systems from a defensive standpoint, while paying limited attention to the potential economic damage that could be induced from an attacker’s perspective. Motivated by this gap, this paper develops an optimal coordinated attack strategy targeting both energy storage units and load-side resources from the attacker’s viewpoint. First, an economic dispatch model for an electricity–heat–gas integrated energy system is established, and a fully distributed solution algorithm is proposed to obtain the optimal economic operating cost. Subsequently, by compromising energy storage and load units with relatively low security levels, a three-stage coordinated cyber-attack framework is designed for the IES. In the first two stages, covert data integrity attacks (DIAs) are launched to inject falsified power information into the system. In the third stage, a denial-of-service (DoS) attack is introduced to operate in synergy with the DIAs, forcing the system to converge to a feasible yet economically suboptimal operating point. The optimal initiation timing of the DoS attack is derived through theoretical analysis. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can induce an economic loss of approximately 21.7% while maintaining system feasibility. By revealing these latent vulnerabilities from an attacker-oriented perspective, this study provides a theoretical basis for the development of proactive defense mechanisms, thereby enhancing the long-term economic and operational security of future integrated energy systems.