  The rise of cyber threats on critical infrastructure and its potential for
devastating consequences, has significantly increased. The dependency of new
power grid technology on information, data analytic and communication systems
make the entire electricity network vulnerable to cyber threats. Power
transformers play a critical role within the power grid and are now commonly
enhanced through factory add-ons or intelligent monitoring systems added later
to improve the condition monitoring of critical and long lead time assets such
as transformers. However, the increased connectivity of those power
transformers opens the door to more cyber attacks. Therefore, the need to
detect and prevent cyber threats is becoming critical. The first step towards
that would be a deeper understanding of the potential cyber-attacks landscape
against power transformers. Much of the existing literature pays attention to
smart equipment within electricity distribution networks, and most methods
proposed are based on model-based detection algorithms. Moreover, only a few of
these works address the security vulnerabilities of power elements, especially
transformers within the transmission network. To the best of our knowledge,
there is no study in the literature that systematically investigate the
cybersecurity challenges against the newly emerged smart transformers. This
paper addresses this shortcoming by exploring the vulnerabilities and the
attack vectors of power transformers within electricity networks, the possible
attack scenarios and the risks associated with these attacks.
