The novel cryptographic key generation and distribution scheme for smart grid

Secret key generation and distribution is crucial to the information security of smart girds. The paper firstly analyzes the merit and vulnerable essence of the key distribution scheme proposed by Xia and Wang. Deliberate analysis reveals the essential weakness of Xia and Wang's scheme is the failure of integrating the initiator's identity with an explicit authenticated code, resulting in possible tampering by man-in-the-middle attacks. Then several improved methods are proposed according to different security requirements. These methods keep the high-efficiency of Xia and Wang's method while avoiding its impersonation attack weakness.