ECCAuth: A Secure Authentication Protocol for Demand Response Management in a Smart Grid System

The devices in smart grids (SG) transfer data to a utility center (UC) or to the remote control centers. Using these data, the energy balance is maintained between consumers and the grid. However, this flow of data may be tampered by the intruders, which may result in energy imbalance. Thus, a robust authentication protocol, which supports dynamic SG device validation and UC addition, both in the local and global domains, is an essential requirement. For this reason, ECCAuth: A novel elliptic curve cryptography-based authentication protocol is proposed in this paper for preserving demand response in SG. This protocol allows establishment of a secret session key between an SG device and a UC after mutual authentication. Using this key, they can securely communicate for exchanging the sensitive information. The formal security analysis, informal security analysis, and formal security verification show that ECCAuth can withstand several known attacks.