A hybrid key agreement scheme utilized elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman for IoT based advanced metering environment

The rise of smart grid, the versatile application and execution of electricity generation to consumer sides through advanced metering infrastructure merged information and communication technology with cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things to enable reliable, secure, and comfortable operation in a smart grid environment. From the electricity consumer side (smart meter) to the utility server, multiple components are performing operations across a public communication network. In recent years, numerous authenticated-key agreement protocols have been invented to ensure authentication between smart meters (consumer end) and utility servers. Moreover, technological advancement allows for the improvement of the advanced metering infrastructure, as well as raised cyber security vulnerabilities. To address these concerns, previous papers were proposed to erase the situation. However, during the authentication process for generating a secure session key between the smart meter and the utility server common errors are a lack of security vulnerabilities due to the system under forward secrecy and failed user anonymity issues disclose the parameter information. Furthermore, most of the proposed protocols utilized high computation cryptographic operation communication bits overheads. Therefore, we proposed a hybrid key agreements protocol leveraging elliptic curve Diffie Hellman-based cryptography with a trusted authority. The novel proposed paper expands key features within protocol such as security aspect link to mutual authentication, preserve forward secrecy, anonymity, man in the middle, replay attack etc. then performance consideration introduced lightweight cryptography solution. For the security assessments, we perform informal and formal analysis by cryptographic parameter evaluation, and the well-known tool AVISPA indicates that the proposed protocol kept multiple security features. Moreover, performance assessment utilized Python crypto library for cryptographic operations and Open-SSL generates signature between smart meters to utility server. The obtained overall time and bits operation cost of the proposed protocol required less computation and communication overheads than existing protocols. Ultimately, the proposed protocol has the potential of practical implementation in advanced metering infrastructure of smart grid.