Secure session key exchange scheme for Smart Grid Home Area Networks

Smart Grid network has a significant security challenges as a result of the large number of smart devices, small data transmissions, and vast applications range. When we deal with smart devices that are moving around gathering information concerning our lives, behaviour or habits there will be great concern regarding the security of that information. One of the Smart Grid subsystems which is vulnerable to security threats could be Home Area Network (HAN). In order to understand what is necessary to properly secure a Smart Grid Home Area Network (SG-HAN) implementation, all of the known threats to such a network must be identified and addressed. The stability and effectiveness of SG-HAN can be adversely affected through a number of attacks other than merely eavesdropping. There are also a number of various points at which an adversary can attempt to attack a network; such as at varying layers in the protocol stack. It is therefore necessary to consider all of the various attacks to which SG-HAN's are susceptible. In this paper we propose secure session key exchange scheme in SG-HAN that ensures defence against replay attacks between the Smart House Devices (SHD) and the Smart Meter (SM) by using freshness counter. The security analysis is done for replay attack scenario. Our security analysis showed the necessity of the proposed security scheme so as to maintain the secure communication between SM and resource constrained SHDs within SG-HAN.