Novel Ultra-Lightweight Leakage-Resilient Blockchain-Assisted Key Exchange Protocol for Resource-Constrained Smart Meters in Smart Grid

Authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocols underpin secure bidirectional communications in smart grid, where real-time flows between neighborhood service providers (NSPs) and resource-constrained smart metering devices (SMDs) demand stringent security and efficiency. Recently, Cheng et al. [1] have proposed an AKE protocol for smart grid intended to be leakage-resilient. Without undermining the noteworthy contributions of their work, this paper demonstrates that their proposed protocol is vulnerable to <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">offline password-guessing</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">key compromise impersonation</i> (KCI) attacks, and does not offer <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">perfect forward secrecy</i> (PFS). To address these limitations, we propose a decentralized ultra- lightweight leakage-resilient AKE protocol between NSPs and SMDs that not only mitigates the security shortcomings of prior top-related works but also imposes minimal overhead on resource-constrained SMDs. The protocol leverages the public Solana blockchain to enhance transparency and enable simple key revocation. Furthermore, it is ultra- lightweight, as the SMD only performs hashing, symmetric encryption/decryption, and physical unclonable function operations. Our security analyses indicate the proposed AKE protocol supports <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">conditional anonymity</i>, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PFS</i>, and resists advanced attacks such as the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">KCI</i> attack. Performance and feature analyses also demonstrate improvements of <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">24%</b> and <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">98%</b> in communication and computational overheads, while offering distinct features.