Lightweight Authentication and Key Agreement for Smart Metering in Smart Energy Networks

Smart meters are considered as foundational part of the smart metering infrastructure (SMI) in smart energy networks. Smart meter is a digital device that makes use of twoway communication between consumer and utility to exchange, manage and control energy consumptions within a home. However, despite all the features, a smart meter raises several securityrelated concerns. For instance, how to exchange data between the legal entities (e.g., smart meter and utility server) while maintaining privacy of the consumer. To address these concerns, authentication and key agreement in SMI can provide important security properties that not only to maintain a trust between the legitimate entities but also to satisfy other security services. This work presents a lightweight authentication and key agreement (LAKA) that enables trust, anonymity, integrity and adequate security in the domain of smart energy network. The proposed scheme employs hybrid cryptography to facilitate mutual trust (authentication), dynamic session key, integrity, and anonymity. We justify the feasibility of the proposed scheme with a testbed using 802.15.4 based device (i.e., smart meter). Moreover, through the security and performance analysis, we show that the proposed scheme is more effective and energy efficient compared to the previous schemes.Funding agencies: U.K. EPSRC (Security and Privacy in Smart Grid Systems: Countermeasure and Formal Verification) [EP/N020170/1]; Center for Industrial Informatics; Research Council of Norway through PREAPP Project [231746/F20]; Research Council of Norway through eX3 Proje