4-way handshaking protection for wireless mesh network security in smart grid

Abstract

Wireless mesh/sensor networks offer various unique features such as self-configuration, ease of installation, scalability, and self-healing, which make them very attractive for deployment in various smart grid domains, such as Home Area Networks (HAN), Neighborhood Area Networks (NAN), and substation/plant-generation local area networks for real-time monitoring and control. Their main drawback is that they are more exposed to cyber-attack as data packets have to be relayed on a hop-by-hop basis. This paper presents a dynamically updating key distribution strategy, together with a message protection scheme in support of 4-way handshaking. For the 4-way handshaking, we propose a hash based encryption scheme to secure the unprotected message exchanges during the handshaking process. This is aimed at improving the resiliency of the network in the situation where an intruder carries a denial of service attack. We then evaluate the security of the proposed scheme against cyber-attack, as well as network performance in terms of delay and overhead.