Prevention of FDI Attacks in Smart Meter by providing Multi-Layer Authentication using ElGamal and SHA

With intent of reducing energy consumption, cost and preventing electricity wastage and power theft, the automated smart grid architecture is revolutionising the traditional electric power grid system. Smart Grid (SG) is a combination of traditional power grid with Information and communication Technologies (ICT). The main feature of smart grid is the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) unit which integrates several smart meters, communicating networks and data management system, enabling two way communications between utilities and customers. But, these systems are more vulnerable to attacks due to several security loopholes and are a constant target for hackers and attackers intending energy theft. Among many, a major vulnerability of the smart meter is the false data injection (FDI) attack wherein the meter readings are at high risk and can be compromised. The Network Interface Card (NIC) in Smart meter is more prone to get effected by FDI attacks. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to prevent the FDI attacks on NIC thereby smart meters using the asymmetric key cryptography algorithm, ElGamal and a hashing algorithm SHA512. Bit-masking, salting is also performed for data integrity. This paper also simulates the digital signature verification and authentication to detect tampering of meter reading.