Secure and Efficient Authentication for Smart Grid Communication Using ECC and PUF

The advanced metering infrastructure AMI is an essential component of the smart grid (SG), providing essential support for two-way communication and real-time data exchange between users and utility providers. However, due to the potential untrustworthiness of the open channel, protecting the confidentiality and integrity of communication data is challenging. Previously, a number of privacy-preserving authentication and key agreement (AKA) schemes have been proposed for securing SGs. However, these solutions either have some security and privacy vulnerabilities or require expensive computational and communication costs that cannot be applied to resource-constrained smart meters. In this work, we propose a novel, lightweight and privacy-preserving AKA scheme for SGs based on the elliptic curve cryptography and physically uncloneable function. The security analysis shows that our construction is secure against several security attacks. In addition, performance comparison with several related works shows the practicality of our design.