=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2178/SSN2018_paper_14
|storemode=property
|title=Security Analysis of Smart Grids
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2178/SSN2018_paper_14.pdf
|volume=Vol-2178
|authors=Joaquín Márquez,Gabriel Rodríguez,Gustavo Betarte,Juan Diego Campo,Eduardo Grampín
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ssn/MarquezRBCG18
}}
==Security Analysis of Smart Grids==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2178/SSN2018_paper_14.pdf
Security analysis of Smart Grids
Joaquı́n Márquez Gabriel Rodrı́guez Gustavo Betarte Juan Diego Campo
Eduardo Grampı́n
Universidad de la República
near real-time information regarding the energy
consumption in order to help in balancing its
Abstract generation and distribution according to the
demand and also to help the customers in dy-
The benefits of Smart Grids are beyond namically adapting their consumption behavior.
doubt. However, thinking of a future
where Smart Meters are ubiquitous raises Our investigation is framed within a collab-
a lot of concerns regarding security and oration between the Engineering School of the
privacy. Some of these concerns include Universidad de la República(UdelaR) and UTE,
the disclosure of the personal information the public electric utility company of Uruguay.
of consumers, the provision of false con- This collaboration aims to identify and develop
sumption data to the utility, or even con- methodological proceedings and technical tools
cerns of national security such as attacks which aid in providing guarantees of the correct-
to attempt to bring down parts of the ness of the adopted solutions for the design and
grid or even the whole grid. The goal of implementation of a Smart Grid, in particular in
our investigation is to identify and develop relation with the security properties which must
methodological proceedings and technical be guaranteed by those solutions. In this context
tools which aid in providing guarantees our investigation aims mainly to contribute in the
of the correctness of the adopted solu- development of a threat model and in defining
tions for the design and implementation preventive and reactive measures to diminish the
of a Smart Grid, in particular in relation impact of the exploitation of those vulnerabilities.
with the security properties which must
be guaranteed by those solutions. We are still in an early stage of the investiga-
tion, studying the state of the art of Smart Grids
1 Introduction and Smart Meters, with an emphasis on inves-
The deployment of Smart Grids has become a tigating the security issues in the context of an
matter of great interest throughout the world, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI).
with some countries heavily investing in research
regarding this topic due to all the benefits 2 Advanced Metering Infrastructure
they could potentially provide to both Electric (AMI)
Utility Companies and their customers. The key Usually, the network of transmission lines,
feature of this type of system is the provision of substations, transformers and more that deliver
electricity is known as the electric grid. An smart
Copyright c by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for
private and academic purposes.
grid is the result of the integration between a
In: Proceedings of the IV School of Systems and Networks
grid and digital technology in order to provide
(SSN 2018), Valdivia, Chile, October 29-31, 2018. Pub- the grid with more capabilities that optimize its
lished at http://ceur-ws.org operations.
consideration. Some of the possible attacks
In this context, an Advanced Metering In- include[Ur-Reh15]:
frastructure is a crucial component of a smart
grid, which handles the two way communication 1. Eavesdropping
between smart meters and data management Resulting in the disclosure of personal infor-
systems, allowing to send, receive and process mation from costumers. It has been shown
consumption data of the clients, and also addi- that a very accurate user profile can be ex-
tional operations over the network. trapolated from the collected data [Mol10].
2. Denial of Service attacks
The most common architecture used to address
With the purpose of shutting down parts of
the features of smart metering systems is pre-
the grid or even the whole grid.
sented in the following diagram [Pop14]. It con-
sists of: 3. Packet injection attacks
For example providing false billing informa-
• Smart meters (SM): local electronic meters tion, generating costs for the customers or
the utilities.
• Data concentrators (DC): process data from
several meters 4. Malware injection attacks
Affecting the communication between de-
• Head End System (HES): central data collec- vices with the goal of compromising the
tion point billing and reporting process, disrupting the
• Local area network (HAN, NAN): allows Demand/Consumption information affecting
bi-directional communication between the the load on the grid.
smart meters and a data concentrator 5. Remote Connect/ Disconnect
• Wide area network (WAN): allows bi- Potentially leaving users without access to
directional communication between the data the service.
concentrators and the head end system 6. Firmware manipulation
For example with the intention of manipulat-
ing the metering functionality to report false
consumption data.
7. Man-in-the-middle attacks
With the goal of providing false consump-
tion information to the gateway or to send
commands to the Smart Meters, potentially
bringing down the whole grid.
The consequences of such attacks range from
the disclosure of information affecting the privacy
of customers, which can have legal consequences
to utilities, to concerns of national security.
Figure 1: Example of AMI architecture [Pop14] 4 Security Countermeasures
Different countermeasures can be used to address
3 Security Concerns in Advance Me-
the concerns presented in the previous section.
tering Infrastructures Many of them may be familiar to the reader, as
As with any communication network there are they are commonly used in general purpose net-
many security concerns that must be taken into works.
1. Encrypted Communication This topic has been proven of great importance
Dual encryption is recommended, encrypting nowadays, especially when security threats could
at the application layer to ensure end-to-end have a wide range of unwanted consequences,
encryption and at the transport layer using where even national security is at risk.
existing protocols such as TLS.
We plan to continue this path, analyzing
2. Integrity Protection the security concerns in depth, reviewing the
Integrity protection, such as using message protocols involved and trying to propose security
authentication codes (MAC) to assure the in- countermeasures specifically designed for the
tegrity of the transmitted consumption data, particular needs of UTE.
is vital in the context of smart grids.
3. Authenticity Verification 6 References
Standard approaches can be used, such as
digital signatures. [Ur-Reh15] O. Ur-Rehman, N. Zivic and C.
Ruland, ”Security issues in smart metering
4. Gateway based Approach systems,” 2015 IEEE International Conference
This is a novel approach, proposed by Eu- on Smart Energy Grid Engineering (SEGE),
ropean countries, such as Germany and the Oshawa, ON, 2015.
UK. It consists of having a Smart Meter-
ing Gateway to act as an intermediary in [Pop14] Z. Popovic and V. Cackovic, ”Ad-
the communication between the Smart Me- vanced Metering Infrastructure in the context of
ters installed in the customer’s premises and Smart Grids,” 2014 IEEE International Energy
the utility. The gateway receives the con- Conference (ENERGYCON), Cavtat, 2014, pp.
sumption measurements from the meters and 1509-1514.
communicates periodically, after a set inter-
val, with the utility servers to send this data, [Mol10] Molina-Markham, A., Shenoy, P., Fu,
being responsible of ensuring the privacy of K., Cecchet, E., Irwin, D.: Private memoirs of
the customer. Also, the gateway receives a smartmeter. In: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM
commands from the utility servers, such as Workshop on Embedded Sensing Systems for
instructions to act based on the load on the Energy-Efficiency in Building, Zurich. ACM
grid. (2010).
5. Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems
This type of systems help in the identification
of intrusions, detection of rogue nodes and
source of attacks and exclusion of these nodes
from further communication in the network.
Apart from the presented countermeasures a
security by design approach is worth taking into
account[Ur-Reh15].
5 Conclusions
An introduction to our investigation was pre-
sented in this summary. Initial considerations
on AMI and security were described as starting
points on our research.