Investigation of security functionality in smart grid

The smart grid brings a new concept to control, manage and monitor the electric power, which is a highly automated digital grid by applying info-communication technology. It boosts energy industry into a new era of reliability, availability, and efficiency that will contribute to our economic and environmental health. However, when we regale ourselves on conveniences of the smart grid, it also results in some potential threats on cyber communication security. In this project, some common threats and potential attacks have been explored, such as dictionary attacks, man in middle attacks(MiTM), network hijacking, relay & wormhole attacks，black hole attacks and Dos attacks. Furthermore, three solutions which are message integrity code encrypted solution (MIC Encrypted Solution), pairwise master key encrypted solution (PMK Encrypted Solution) and Hash function solution are proposed for solving those cyber communication security issues. These solutions will improve the efficient mesh security association scheme(EMSA) under IEEE802.11i standard. MIC Encrypted Solution is implemented to realise a safety communication channel between supplicant and authenticator. And there are four steps to finish a safety communication channel building up. The first step is establishing a peer link between two mesh points(MP), which will ensue that data frames shall not be transmitted before peer link establishment successfully between two MPs. This procedure will identify the peer link uniquely and avoid the relay and wormhole attacks efficiently. Then the second step is extensible authentication Protocol (EAP) which is defined by IEEE802.1X. The EAP will provide a bidirectional authentication between supplicant and authenticator, which will prevent the network hijacking and dictionary attacks. After identities authentication of IEEE802.1X, authenticator and supplicant will get a same session key and they will treat this session key as their PMK. Simultaneously, Through EAP over LAN key(EAPOL-KEY), supplicant and authenticator will carry on third step which is four-way handshake within MIC encrypted. This handshake is successful and the PTK is installed if PMK of supplicant is consistent with authenticator’s, otherwise, symmetric key deploys failed. Meanwhile, a secret communication channel is built up and Dos attacks, man in middle attacks & black hole attacks are being prevented. Then the last step is mesh key holder security shake (MKHSH) which will deliver new master session key to supplicant within key distributor pairwise transient key (PTK-KD) encrypted. At this moment, the supplicant is working as a new authenticator, producing new key hierarchy and involving another mesh point. Consequently, the mesh network for the smart grid will expand widely and form a wireless mesh communication network. Similarly, PMK encrypted solution has applied a secret key on the transmission of message 1 to enhance the handshake security and to improve the EMSA scheme. And with the implementation of hash function whose characteristic is hardly to de-hash, intruder cannot forge or tamper message 1 so that the 4-way handshake can be realised successfully. Through a theory analysis, MIC encrypted solution, PMK encrypted solution and Hash function solution have provided a mechanism or method to protect the cyber security of smart grid against the potential attacks so that complex power grid system can be managed and controlled effectively and intelligently with integrating reliable, high speed & secure wireless communication network [1]. Compared to a theory analysis, formal verification, logic proof and performance evaluation are implemented for these three solutions in this project as well. What this project done has shown that MIC encrypted solution, PMK encrypted solution and hash function solution is efficient way to remain cyber security against potential attacks in smart grid.Bachelor of Engineerin