Cloud Based Cyber Security Defense of Smart Meters

In Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), smart meters (SM) implement encryption with Embedded Secure Access Module (ESAM) to implement secure communication. However, it may be attacked by malicious adversaries once the ESAM is cracked. Since SM has limited communication and computing resources and cannot detect malicious code, a cloud based cyber security protection approach is proposed to detect malware online. Firstly, the closed and fixed operating environment is utilized to establish and maintain a white list of legal processes in the cloud security server. Thereafter, the malware detection agent is installed in SM, and all operating processes are enumerated by it. The hash code of each process can be calculated as its identity and submitted to the cloud security server. The SM with malware could be identified by comparing it with the whitelist. SM needs only calculate and upload hash code of processes, which is affordable to SM with limited computing & communication resources. The proposed approach can help harden cyber security defense of AMI.