In recent days, the most important concern in the Internet of Things (IoT) is to experience distinct technologies in the communication systems. Smart grid is a pertinent common application under a single umbrella of the IoT and it can accomplish the communication via the Internet Protocol to sustain the information exchange between the service provider and the smart meter in the system. However, IP-based communication systems make this task susceptible to several serious security attacks. To prevent these attacks, many security protocols between the service provider and smart meter have been proposed in the literature. Existing security mechanisms allow the smart meters to establish a connection with the service provider, but it is essential to design a security system by which the service provider can communicate with multiple smart meters and establish a connection with them. To establish such connection, all the smart meters need be authenticated with the service provider and agree on an individual session key. In this article, we propose a novel mutually authenticated key establishment protocol between the service provider and the smart meter by which the service provider can initiate the communication. The proposed protocol is proven to be correct using the formal method Gong, Needham, and Yahalom logic. The protocol is also simulated in the automated tool ProVerif and the results are detailed. The proposed protocol and the existing pertinent protocols are compared in several aspects. Comparison results show that our protocol outperforms the others.
In recent days, the most important concern in the Internet of Things (IoT) is to experience distinct technologies in the communication systems. Smart grid is a pertinent common application under a single umbrella of the IoT and it can accomplish the communication via the Internet Protocol to sustain the information exchange between the service provider and the smart meter in the system. However, IP-based communication systems make this task susceptible to several serious security attacks. To prevent these attacks, many security protocols between the service provider and smart meter have been proposed in the literature. Existing security mechanisms allow the smart meters to establish a connection with the service provider, but it is essential to design a security system by which the service provider can communicate with multiple smart meters and establish a connection with them. To establish such connection, all the smart meters need be authenticated with the service provider and agree on an individual session key. In this article, we propose a novel mutually authenticated key establishment protocol between the service provider and the smart meter by which the service provider can initiate the communication. The proposed protocol is proven to be correct using the formal method Gong, Needham, and Yahalom logic. The protocol is also simulated in the automated tool ProVerif and the results are detailed. The proposed protocol and the existing pertinent protocols are compared in several aspects. Comparison results show that our protocol outperforms the others.
Internet of Things-enabled smart grid (SG) technology provides ample advantages to traditional power grids. In an SG system, the smart meter (SM) is the critical component that collects the power usage information related to users and delivers the accumulated vital information to the central service provider (CSP) via the Internet, imperiled to numerous pernicious security threats. Consequently, it is crucial to preserve the integrity of the communication between SMs and CSP for the smooth running of the SG system. Authentication protocol effectively enables SM and CSP to communicate securely by establishing a secure channel. This paper presents an anonymous and reliable authentication protocol for SG (ARAP-SG) to enable secure and reliable information exchange. The proposed ARAP-SG uses the hash function, elliptic curve cryptography, and symmetric encryption to complete the authentication phase. ARAP-SG guarantees reliable information exchange during the authentication phase while conserving the anonymity of both SP and SM. Additionally, ARAP-SG authorizes CSP and SM to construct a session key (SK) after accomplishing the authentication phase for undecipherable information exchange in the future. We utilized the random oracle model to corroborate the security of constructed SK. Moreover, we demonstrate that ARAP-SG is proficient in thwarting covert security attacks by effectuating informal security analysis. Furthermore, Scyther-based corroboration manifests that ARAP-SG is secure. Finally, we explain through a comparative analysis with relevant authentication protocols that ARAP-SG entails 25.5-56.76% and 7.69-49.47% low computational and communication overheads, respectively, with improved security properties.
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.
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.
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.
In recent years, the Internet of things (IoT) has become an encouraging communication paradigm that has numerous applications including smart city, smart home and intelligent transportation system. The information sensed by several IoT smart devices can be security stored at the (cloud) servers. An external user, being a client, can access the services from a server for the sensing information, provided that a mutual authentication happens among them. Using the established session key among the user and the server, encrypted information with the help of session key can be delivered to the user by the server securely. Recently, Rana et al. proposed a smart-card based remote user authentication scheme using user password. In this comment paper, we carefully analyzed the scheme of Rana et al. and tracked down that their scheme is insecure against serious attacks, including stolen smart card attack, privileged-insider attack, user impersonation attack, password change attack and Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL) attack. Furthermore, their scheme does not preserve untraceability feature. To remedy these security pitfalls, we also provide some remedies that can help in building more secure and effective user authentication scheme to apply in securing next generation IoT infrastructure.