Efficient Authentication and Key Management Mechanisms for Smart Grid Communications

• Published in: IEEE systems journal Vol. 8; no. 2; pp. 629 - 640
• Main Authors: Nicanfar, Hasen, Jokar, Paria, Beznosov, Konstantin, Leung, Victor C. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2014; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Authentication; Enhanced identity-based cryptography (EIBC); key management; Management; Meters; mutual authentication; Network security; Networks; Passwords; Protocols; Public key; Public Key Infrastructure; secure remote password (SRP); Security; Servers; Smart grid; smart grid (SG); smart meter (SM); Synthetic aperture sonar; System of systems; mutual authentication; security; smart grid (SG); Enhanced identity-based cryptography (EIBC); key management; secure remote password (SRP); smart meter (SM)
• ISSN: 1932-8184; 1937-9234
• DOI: 10.1109/JSYST.2013.2260942

A smart grid (SG) consists of many subsystems and networks, all working together as a system of systems, many of which are vulnerable and can be attacked remotely. Therefore, security has been identified as one of the most challenging topics in SG development, and designing a mutual authentication scheme and a key management protocol is the first important step. This paper proposes an efficient scheme that mutually authenticates a smart meter of a home area network and an authentication server in SG by utilizing an initial password, by decreasing the number of steps in the secure remote password protocol from five to three and the number of exchanged packets from four to three. Furthermore, we propose an efficient key management protocol based on our enhanced identity-based cryptography for secure SG communications using the public key infrastructure. Our proposed mechanisms are capable of preventing various attacks while reducing the management overhead. The improved efficiency for key management is realized by periodically refreshing all public/private key pairs as well as any multicast keys in all the nodes using only one newly generated function broadcasted by the key generator entity. Security and performance analyses are presented to demonstrate these desirable attributes.