Multiauthority Traceable Ring Signature Scheme for Smart Grid Based on Blockchain

Abstract

As the next-generation power grid system, the smart grid can realize the balance of supply and demand and help in communication security and privacy protection. However, real-time power consumption data collection might expose the users’ privacy information, such as their living habits and economic conditions. In addition, during the process of data transmission, it may lead to data inconsistency between the user side and the storage side. Blockchain provides tamper-resistant and traceable characteristics for solving these problems, and ring signature schemes provide an anonymous authentication mechanism. Therefore, in this work, we consider the applications of ring signature scheme in smart grid based on blockchain. We introduce the notion of multi-authority traceable ring signature (MA-TRS) scheme for distributed setting. In our scheme, there is an auditing node that can distinguish the identity of the real signer from the ring without any secret information. Last but not least, we prove that the proposed scheme is unforgeable, anonymous, and traceable.