A Quantum Safe Mutual Authentication Protocol for Smart Meter Communications With Experimental Evaluation

The security landscape will change dramatically with the advent of quantum computers and existing security schemes in various domains including smart grid communications must be updated to make them secure from quantum computer-enabled attacks. In this paper, we propose a quantum-safe mutual authentication protocol, leveraging the concepts of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG), for secure communication between smart meters and a server. Unlike conventional schemes based on cryptographic algorithms that rely on difficulties to solve certain mathematical problems, the proposed protocol is secure against attacks arising from quantum computers. In the proposed protocol, QKD is employed to establish secure keys in smart meter communications with provable security while QRNG provides truly random numbers that are unknown to any eavesdropper. Specifically, we employ the Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDI QKD), a type of QKD whose security does not rely on any assumptions about measurement devices. We provide a formal security proof for the proposed scheme under the real-or-random (RoR) model. Additionally, we conduct a proof-of-concept experimental demonstration, using the secure keys from a MDI QKD system and random numbers from QRNG, to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of the proposed scheme.