  A new mechanism aimed at misleading a power system control center about the
source of a data attack is proposed. As a man-in-the-middle state attack, a
data framing attack is proposed to exploit the bad data detection and
identification mechanisms currently in use at most control centers. In
particular, the proposed attack frames meters that are providing correct data
as sources of bad data such that the control center will remove useful
measurements that would otherwise be used by the state estimator.
  The optimal design of a data framing attack is formulated as a quadratically
constrained quadratic program (QCQP). It is shown that the proposed attack is
capable of perturbing the power system state estimate by an arbitrary degree
controlling only half of a critical set of measurements that are needed to make
a system unobservable. Implications of this attack on power system operations
are discussed, and the attack performance is evaluated using benchmark systems.
