Three Phase Authentication Protocol for Smart Grid Communication

Abstract

Due to the recent IT enabled development of the Smart Grid (SG) technologies, the authentication of such systems has become a key concern. In this paper, we review some of the work that has been undertaken in this area and discuss the drawbacks that these approaches lacked. We then propose a new, secure and robust authentication protocol for smart grid authentication. In our work, we have proposed a mathematical model for a secure communication channel involving four different entities namely Trusted Authority, Sub-station, Smart Meter and the User. We have also performed a security analysis which comprehensively shows how the designed protocol is able fend-off various well known cyber security attacks. The security of our proposed work is built on the fact that given a publicly known base point, finding the random element on a curve is infeasible (also known as the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP)) along with various encryption and hashing algorithms. Therefore, it is safe against several cyber-security attacks.