Secure Data Exchange Scheme for Smart Grids

the transmission of smart grid data over public networks exposes it to numerous privacy and security violations. To curb these threats, a number of authentication protocols have been developed. However, majority of them are sophisticated and still susceptible to privacy as well as security attacks. In addition, some of them have performance issues due to computationally expensive operations such as bilinear pairings. In this paper, a secure data exchange scheme for smart grids is presented based on lightweight elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) scalar multiplication and point additions. The security analysis shows that it is robust against common smart grid attack vectors such as packet replays, privileged insider and impersonation attacks. In addition, it offers perfect backward and forward key secrecy and secure mutual authentication among the smart meter, utility control center and the registration authority. In terms of performance, it experiences average computation costs and the best communication overheads among other related protocols.