Cryptanalysis and Improvement of Secure Key Distribution for the Smart Grid

Abstract

The smart grid is a network of computers and power infrastructures that monitor and manage energy usage and uses intelligent transmission and distribution networks to deliver electricity for improving the electric system's reliability and efficiency. With grid controls, energy transmission management could be enhanced and resilience to control-system failures would be increased. Although deploying the smart grid has numerous social and technical benefits, several security concerns arise. In 2012, Xia and Wang proposed a secure key distribution for the smart grid. They claimed their protocol is strong enough to defend against security attacks. In this paper, we investigate the security of Xia and Wang's protocol. More precisely, we show that once the smart meter generates a session key with the service provider, the smart meter could easily forge the new legitimate session key without the service provider's participation. In order to remedy the security flaw, we propose a simple and secure improvement of Xia and Wang's protocol. Our protocol is secure and fair to generate the session key between the smart meter and the service provider.