An Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Smart Grid

Smart Grid allows users to deal with information related to the electricity usage via IP networks, and then guarantee of both validity and privacy of information is necessary for users. In our future scope, the electricity bill used by consumers may be charged to the consumers themselves via the Smart Grid, even outside their homes. Such information is strictly related to privacy of consumers and hence we propose an anonymous authentication protocol for the electricity usage on the Smart Grid. Our main idea is to utilize group signatures with controllable linkability. In these group signatures, only designated signers can generate digital signatures with anonymity under a single group public key, and only entities with a link key can distinguish whether the signatures are generated by a same signer or not. Whereas our proposed protocol is able to include any group signature scheme with controllable linkability, we also propose new controllably linkable group signatures with tokens, which are handled by smart meters on the Smart Grid.