Actively Secure Authenticated Data Acquisition Protocols: Advancing Substation Automation Security

Actively Secure Authenticated Data Acquisition Protocols: Advancing Substation Automation Security

연구 분야: Networking

학회: International Symposium on Foundations and Practice of Security

The deployment of sensors and electronic devices has become instrumental in realizing the functionality of a smart grid. Secure operational data collection via communication protocols from field devices by the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) at the utility control center is fundamental for the secure and reliable operation of smart grids. In this work, we propose two efficient transport-layer protocols for authenticated acquisition of data from smart grid devices. Our first protocol is based on a pre-shared key, and the second protocol is certificate-based. The constructions of our protocols are based on computationally efficient cryptographic primitives such as lightweight authenticated encryption, digital signatures, and elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) computations. We formally prove the security of our protocols against both active and passive adversaries. Finally, to demonstrate their practicality, we implement our protocols and perform comparative analysis with other contemporary protocols.