IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Robust and Efficient Authentication Protocol Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Smart Grids
Unlike traditional power networks, the smart grid power system has the ability to arrange the power supply in real time to the customer for active power consumption. Therefore, it can avoid excess electricity generation. In addition, based on the current power consumption, the power service providers can measure the expected power generation amount to stabilize the power system. Compared with traditional power networks, the characteristics of the smart grid power system make it easier to suffer from several types of security threats and attacks such as impersonation, eavesdropping and message modification etc. In order to strength the security of smart grid networks, a robust and efficient authentication protocol should provide to mutual authentication and session key agreement. Since the communications between the control center and the substation is protected by the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, we focus on the secure communication between the substation and the smart appliances. In this paper, a robust and efficient authentication protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography is proposed to achieve mutual authentication and key agreement between the substation and the smart appliances. In addition, the proposed protocol not only resists replay attacks, impersonation attacks, and man-in-middle attacks, but also provides the session key security and the known-key security.
Unlike traditional power networks, the smart grid power system has the ability to arrange the power supply in real time to the customer for active power consumption. Therefore, it can avoid excess electricity generation. In addition, based on the current power consumption, the power service providers can measure the expected power generation amount to stabilize the power system. Compared with traditional power networks, the characteristics of the smart grid power system make it easier to suffer from several types of security threats and attacks such as impersonation, eavesdropping and message modification etc. In order to strength the security of smart grid networks, a robust and efficient authentication protocol should provide to mutual authentication and session key agreement. Since the communications between the control center and the substation is protected by the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, we focus on the secure communication between the substation and the smart appliances. In this paper, a robust and efficient authentication protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography is proposed to achieve mutual authentication and key agreement between the substation and the smart appliances. In addition, the proposed protocol not only resists replay attacks, impersonation attacks, and man-in-middle attacks, but also provides the session key security and the known-key security.
With the enablement of Internet of Things technology, the electrical grid is currently undergoing a drastic revolution, which is known as smart grid. Since massive sensitive data and control commands transmitted via public channels, the smart grid is challenged by various cyber threats. Authenticated key agreement protocols in smart grid effectively ensure the confidentiality and authentication of communication through mutual authentication and establishing session keys. In this article, we review the existing elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)-based authentication and key agreement protocols in smart gird and perform a security analysis of Hu et al.’s protocol. We exhibit that the protocol fails to resist key compromise impersonation (KCI) attack and cannot provide untraceability. Furthermore, we propose a security-enhanced authentication and key agreement protocol based on ECC, which performs registration, authentication, and key agreement phases over public channels to enable mutual authentication and to establish session keys. The protocol is also proved to be security-enhanced by formal proof and informal analysis. The performance analysis results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is comparable to other existing protocols while achieving enhanced security. Therefore, the protocol satisfies the deployment requirements for resource-constrained smart grid.
The IoT-enabled Smart Grid uses IoT smart devices to collect the private electricity data of consumers and send it to service providers over the public network, which leads to some new security problems. To ensure the communication security in a smart grid, many researches are focusing on using authentication and key agreement protocols to protect against cyber attacks. Unfortunately, most of them are vulnerable to various attacks. In this paper, we analyze the security of an existent protocol by introducing an insider attacker, and show that their scheme cannot guarantee the claimed security requirements under their adversary model. Then, we present an improved lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol, which aims to enhance the security of IoT-enabled smart grid systems. Furthermore, we proved the security of the scheme under the real-or-random oracle model. The result shown that the improved scheme is secure in the presence of both internal attackers and external attackers. Compared with the original protocol, the new protocol is more secure, while keeping the same computation efficiency. Both of them are 0.0552 ms. The communication of the new protocol is 236 bytes, which is acceptable in smart grids. In other words, with similar communication and computation cost, we proposed a more secure protocol for smart grids.
The increasing complexity of the smart grid raises significant concerns regarding the security of smart grid communication. As a countermeasure, authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol ensures the secure transmission of sensitive information between legitimate entities by achieving mutual authentication and establishing session keys. One of the most urgent and critical security threats in AKA protocol concerns ephemeral secret leakage (ESL) attack, due to its threat to session key secrecy. However, there remains a lack of systematic understanding of how to resist ESL attacks in smart grid environment. Therefore, we categorize the ESL attack into three different types, then conduct an in-depth analysis of their root causes and propose corresponding recommendations to mitigate it. To further illustrate the effectiveness of the recommendations, we design a secure and efficient AKA protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography accordingly. The proposed protocol is proven secure through rigorous security proof under the random oracle model and formally verified by AVISPA tool. Performance comparisons indicate that the proposed protocol outperforms other related protocols due to its lightweight nature and adherence to all fundamental security attributes, making it well-suited for deployment in resource-constrained smart grid environment.
Abstract Smart grid (SG) facilitates our lives by providing more reliable electricity and enabling better integration of renewable energy sources. Currently, numerous authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocols have been proposed to secure SG communication. However, these solutions often result in considerable cost, making them inappropriate for resource-constrained SG environment. In this paper, we propose a secure and resource-efficient AKA protocol by employing lightweight cryptography primitives including authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) primitive ASCON, hash function and XOR operation. The ASCON primitive simultaneously provides data confidentiality, integrity and authenticity with low computation cost, making it suitable for employing in resource-constrained SG environment. The secret intermediate values in the protocol are designed as hash values that incorporate both long-term and short-term secrets, thereby providing enhanced security while further reducing cost. Moreover, a dynamic indexing method is deployed in the protocol to resist de-synchronization attack. The designed protocol performs secure mutual authentication and session key establishment between entities without relying on a central trusted authority. The proposed protocol is proven secure through rigorous security proof under the real-or-random model and formally verified by AVISPA tool. Theoretical performance analysis and simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol outperforms other related protocols due to its lightweight nature and adherence to all fundamental security attributes, making it suitable for deployment in smart grid environment.
The key management faces significant challenges in terms of efficiency, scalability, and quantum resistance in smart grid environments. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing a novel mutual authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol for the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era. The protocol integrates quantum and classical information streams, enabling secure key agreement without third-party reliance. For the first time, quantum-based mutual identity authentication is applied to smart grid security, with a comprehensive analysis of resilience against various attacks, including man-in-the-middle, quantum computation, relay, impersonation, and DoS. Experimental results show that the scheme achieves a communication cost of 0.9 KB for 2 rounds, outperforming quantum-resistant schemes (2.5 KB) and performing similarly to classical schemes (1.2 KB). The scheme requires 2 quantum preparations and 1 measurement, offering higher efficiency compared to quantum-resistant methods. Compared to QKD and computational hardness-based models, our approach provides superior key management efficiency, practical implementation in non-fault-tolerant quantum systems, and enhanced security protection. Rigorous analysis and validation using IBM’s quantum-enabled environments demonstrate the robustness of the protocol in addressing modern smart grid security challenges.
Industry 4.0 allows faster data accessibility, improved performance, fault identification, and remote control of machines within any smart factory. Due to the massive generation of delay-sensitive data, this system demands a robust security mechanism against security threats. In order to mitigate such potential attacks and provide security-free services, this article proposes an edge-based conditional privacy-preserving authentication scheme based on quantum key distribution protocol for secure authentication and secure communication within smart grid infrastructure. Apart from guaranteeing security against threats such as node impersonation, message tampering, and repudiation, the scheme also defends man-in-the-middle attacks, replay attacks, etc. We validate the proposed protocol through a simulation study. The result indicates that it performs reasonably well and enables unconditional security for the data exchanged between entities of smart grid infrastructure.