FENCE is a cybersecurity research platform bridging theoretical methods and practical security implementations within the energy sector. Built upon a realistic infrastructure at KIT‘s Campus North – the KASTEL Security Lab Energy – it comprises several subsystems modeling renewable energy plants, multi-vendor digital substations, software-defined network setups, and PLC-based power plant simulations. We demonstrate a multi-stage cyber-attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in the Siemens S7 protocol, widely used in industrial control systems of power plants.
FENCE facilitates a thorough analysis of vulnerabilities, supports research in intrusion detection, and enables effective mitigation strategies and systematic risk assessment. It specifically targets critical cybersecurity challenges within energy systems and presents our research findings through an intuitive web interface for enhanced accessibility and usability.

This demonstrator is used to investigate critical threats from manipulated GNSS signals compromising precise time synchronization necessary for digital substation operations.