Research on Lightweight Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol in Power Grid Based on the SM9 Cryptographic Algorithm

Abstract

Abstract With the wide application of power grids, the massive heterogeneous terminals become important data collection nodes and data relay nodes. However, the openness of the power system exposes the power grid to various security threats. Authentication key agreement protocol can provide authentication and session key sharing services and is the most important technical means to protect the communication security of power grids. However, the design of authentication key agreement protocols for power grids faces many challenges. Firstly, the members of the power grid change frequently, and each new member needs to be authenticated with the edge side equipment every time it joins, so the existing authentication scheme has a large computational overhead. Furthermore, the network communication bandwidth is limited, and the existing schemes have a high time overhead due to the number of communication interactions when performing terminal authentication with the edge side equipment. Finally, the existing schemes all use non-national secret algorithms, which cannot achieve autonomous control. This paper designs a lightweight power grid authentication key agreement protocol based on the state-secure SM9 algorithm to address the above technical challenges. Also, corresponding security proofs based on the threat model of power grids and the existing attack patterns are offered, and code implementation is carried out. It is experimentally verified that the computation time overhead and communication overhead of this scheme are smaller than those of the existing authentication key agreement protocols based on identification cryptosystems.