Design and Implementation of an SM2-Based Security Authentication Scheme With the Key Agreement for Smart Grid Communications

Smart grids have a number of benefits; they provide a reliable and uninterruptible power supply and promote smart cities in a smart way. Multiple modes of communication are deployed in smart grids, including wired networks and wireless networks. More and more intelligent terminals are connected to the smart grid control center (SC), such as RTU, charge pile control terminal, centralized meter reading terminal, and so on. The communication between the SC and the smart grid terminals is susceptible to cyber-attacks due to a lack of inherent and effective security mechanisms. Some security communication schemes for smart grids have recently been proposed in the relevant literature. However, published schemes have limited features. Given the security needs of smart grid communication networks and the inherent qualities of smart terminals, we proposed a novel authentication scheme that addresses cyber-attacks using a minimal number of computations. The proposed scheme is implemented based on mutual authentication as well as an improved SM2-based key agreement. Through detailed security analysis and experimental evaluation, this paper validates the security of the approach based on the lowest possible communication and computational costs.