Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Smart Metering System

One of the main advantages of the new power grid over the traditional grid is the intelligent energy management by the customer and the Operator. Energy supply, demand response management, and consumption regulation are only possible with the smart metering system. Smart meters are the main component of that system. Hence, a compromised smart meter or a successful attack against this entity may cause data theft, data falsification, and server/device manipulation. Therefore, Smart grids' development and the guarantee of their services are related to the ability to avoid attacks and disasters by ensuring high security. This paper aims to provide a secure and lightweight security protocol that respects the IOT device constraints. The proposition deploys the distributed OTP calculations combined with the Blake2s hash function and the Ascon AEAD cipher to ensure authentication, confidentiality, and integrity. We propose a performance analysis, an informal and a formal security evaluation made by the AVISPA-SPAN tool. Also, we compare the proposed protocol to other similar works. The assessment proves that the proposed protocol is light, valid, secure, and robust against many attacks that threaten the NAN area of the smart metering system, namely, MITM and replay attacks.