Towards secure end-to-end data aggregation in AMI through delayed-integrity-verification

The integrity and authenticity of the energy usage data in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is crucial to ensure the correct energy load to facilitate generation, distribution and customer billing. Any malicious tampering to the data must be detected immediately. This paper introduces secure end-to-end data aggregation for AMI, a security protocol that allows the concentrators to securely aggregate the data collected from the smart meters, while enabling the utility back-end that receives the aggregated data to verify the integrity and data originality. Compromise of concentrators can be detected. The aggregated data is protected using Chameleon Signatures and then forwarded to the utility back-end for verification, accounting, and analysis. Using the Trapdoor Chameleon Hash Function, the smart meters can periodically send an evidence to the utility back-end, by computing an alternative message and a random value (m', r) such that m' consists of all previous energy usage measurements of the smart meter in a specified period of time. By verifying that the Chameleon Hash Value of (m', r) and that the energy usage matches those aggregated by the concentrators, the utility back-end is convinced of the integrity and authenticity of the data from the smart meters. Any data anomaly between smart meters and concentrators can be detected, thus indicating potential compromise of concentrators.