Low complexity smart grid security protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography, biometrics and hamming distance

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Cybersecurity

Background:

• Smart grids leverage information and communication technologies for enhanced demand-response management, reduced energy consumption, and improved power quality.
• However, transmitting control and consumption data over public channels poses significant security and privacy risks.
• Existing authentication protocols struggle to balance ideal security and privacy with optimal performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a robust authentication protocol for smart grids that addresses security and privacy vulnerabilities.
• To leverage a combination of Hamming distance, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), smart cards, and biometrics for enhanced security.
• To formally analyze the protocol's security and performance against established threat models.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel authentication protocol integrating Hamming distance, ECC, smart cards, and biometrics.
• Formal security analysis using Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic for mutual authentication and session key negotiation.
• Semantic security analysis under Dolev-Yao (DY) and Canetti-Krawczyk (CK) threat models.

Main Results:

• The proposed protocol achieves strong mutual authentication and session key negotiation, as verified by BAN logic.
• Semantic security analysis confirms the protocol's robustness against DY and CK threat models.
• Performance analysis indicates competitive communication, storage, and computation complexities compared to existing protocols.

Conclusions:

• The developed authentication protocol offers a promising solution for securing smart grid communications.
• The integration of multiple security technologies enhances resilience against various cyber threats.
• The protocol presents a viable option for improving the security and privacy of smart grids without significant performance degradation.