| Title | R-Chain: A Universally Composable Relay Resilience Framework for Smart Grids |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Authors | Sani, Abubakar Sadiq, Yuan, Dong, Meng, Ke, Dong, Zhao Yang |
| Conference Name | 2021 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM) |
| Keywords | authentication, Automation, composability, cryptography, Key derivation, performance evaluation, Protocols, pubcrawl, ransomware, relay resilience, Smart grids, universal composability |
| Abstract | Smart grids can be exposed to relay attacks (or wormhole attacks) resulting from weaknesses in cryptographic operations such as authentication and key derivation associated with process automation protocols. Relay attacks refer to attacks in which authentication is evaded without needing to attack the smart grid itself. By using a universal composability model that provides a strong security notion for designing cryptographic operations, we formulate the necessary relay resilience settings for strengthening authentication and key derivation and enhancing relay security in process automation protocols in this paper. We introduce R-Chain, a universally composable relay resilience framework that prevents bypass of cryptographic operations. Our framework provides an ideal chaining functionality that integrates all cryptographic operations such that all outputs from a preceding operation are used as input to the subsequent operation to support relay resilience. We apply R-Chain to provide relay resilience in a practical smart grid process automation protocol, namely WirelessHART. |
| DOI | 10.1109/PESGM46819.2021.9638015 |
| Citation Key | sani_r-chain_2021 |
R-Chain: A Universally Composable Relay Resilience Framework for Smart Grids