Lightweight Mutual Authentication Scheme for Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is drawing more attention due to various benefits which it brings. Compared with traditional power grid systems or advanced meter reading (AMR) systems, AMI systems possess capabilities to provide improved management and predictability of power utilization, to monitor and detect fault occurrences, and to conserve energy. However, behind the various benefits brought by AMI, there still exist plenty of security threats. The open network used by AMIs is an extremely convenient interface for malicious attackers or network hackers to damage the AMI systems. In the system of AMI, any action that gains access to the meter must pass the authentication. Existing authentication schemes either require on-line authentication or need to store lots of data on the meter. Therefore, this paper presents a lightweight mutual authentication scheme that can be performed off-line with a small amount of authentication data. The scheme was implemented with the One-Time Password (OTP) and hash functions.