A security-enhanced three-party authentication and key agreement scheme for smart grid communication

Securing communications within smart grids presents a critical challenge, particularly due to the increasing vulnerability of conventional authenticated key agreement schemes to quantum computing threats. Furthermore, ensuring robust security against physical attacks on devices like smart meters while maintaining low computational and communication overhead remains a significant hurdle. To address this issue, this study proposes NTRU-P3AKE (NTRU-based Three-Party Authenticated Key Exchange). This novel scheme integrates the Nth-Truncated Ring Unit (NTRU) algorithm with Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and fuzzy extractors, enabling robust authentication and key agreement among smart meters, the control center, and service providers. The NTRU-P3AKE scheme supports registration via an open channel. It leverages NTRU to mitigate quantum threats, employs PUFs to resist physical attacks, and ensures forward security through dynamic random number updates. The proposed scheme’s security is rigorously evaluated via informal security analysis and formal verification. The latter uses the ProVerif tool and Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic analysis. Comprehensive evaluations validate its exceptional efficiency, achieving a 99.0% reduction in computational overhead (0.244 ms) compared to the most computationally intensive scheme, a 70.8% reduction in communication cost (1440 bits) versus the most bandwidth-heavy approach, and a 79.4% reduction in energy consumption on smart meters (0.166 mJ) relative to the most energy-intensive protocol. These advancements make the proposed solution particularly suitable for resource-constrained smart grid environments requiring both high security and operational efficiency.