Strong authentication countermeasures using dynamic keying for sinkhole and distance spoofing attacks in smart grid networks

Abstract

This paper presents a proposal to provide secure communications in smart grid / utility metering networks using RPL (Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks). The RPL protocol provides optimal routing performance in some wireless sensor networks and may become a strong standard in utility metering networks. However, the protocol does have numerous security flaws which should be addressed prior to its use in critical infrastructure such as automated metering infrastructure (AMI). Among those flaws, this paper examines the sinkhole and distance spoofing attacks; in addition, it proposes modifications to RPL addressing routing vulnerabilities, including using node-to-node encrypted authentication with dynamically served encryption keys and key-compromising detection using data mining. Simulation results show that the proposed resolution provides good performance characteristics for use in utility grid networks.

Smart Grid Metering Networks: A Survey on Security, Privacy and Open Research Issues

“…Following the routing threats, an attacker can take control over these sink nodes and use them to send malicious commands, for instance to turn off the power of the consumer premises. In [140], Taylor-Johnson developed secure communications against sinkhole attacks in smart grid metering networks. To set up a communication link over the low-power mesh network, the scheme uses the routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL) protocol, which is a routing protocol for the low-power and lossy networks.…”

“…Summary: In SG metering networks, most of the schemes discuss a verity of attacks, e.g., secure to packet flooding attack [99], resilient to MITM attack [133], resilient to DoS attack [134], and sinkhole and spoofing attacks [140]. These proposed solutions mainly use two types of countermeasures, such as, cryptographic-based (e.g., [99], [133], [140], [141]) and networking-based (e.g., [134], [144]).…”

“…A routing protocol should be integrated with a security and privacy design in order to mitigate the public SG metering communication paths. Note that the cryptography based techniques ( [99], [133], [140], [141]) can protect from impersonation, masquerade, MITM, and integrity attacks. However, these techniques does not appear effective to detect other malicious attacks or malfunction due to the packet modification.…”

Performance Analysis of Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) in Large Scale Networks

“…Feature Impact Rank Attack [55], [57] Choose non-preferred parent as parent node Destroy routing or format loops Local Repair Attack [55], [57] Send local repair information untimely Destroy routing, waste routing resources Neighbor Attack [57] Manipulate control information to deceive neighbour nodes Forge and destroy routing, waste network resources Routing Choice Attack [56] Choose non-optimal routing path Destroy routing, waste routing resources Sinkhole Attack [58] Route traffic to the node pretending to be a valid sink Destroy routing and topology Distance Spoofing Attack [58] Route traffic to a node near the sink Destroy routing and waste computation resources deploys monitor nodes in finite state machine mode, every node in a network should be monitored under at least one of them. Such a method works well to efficiently detect rank attacks and local attacks [55].…”

“…Clark et al [58] proposed a node-to-node encrypted authentication method by exchanging encryption key. Seeber et al [59] deployed a Trust Platform Model (TPM), which is able to provide cryptographic operations and node authentication, to avoid evil routing information through related trust construction and key exchange mechanism.…”