Balanced anonymity and traceability for outsourcing small-scale data linear aggregation in the smart grid

Along with the development of information technology, the traditional electrical grid is moving to smart grid technology. By using the smart grid, the users and utility providers can more efficiently manage and generate power. Along with the advantages, the smart grid is also faced with new security concerns. In the smart grid, the user's citizen identity information should be preserved and the offensive user should be traced. For some low-capacity devices, it is indispensable to perform complicated computation by using outsourcing computation. The authors provide the outsourcing computation through public cloud. Anonymity and traceability are two important security properties in the smart grid. They are the unity of opposites. On the basis of the security requirements, they propose the balanced anonymity and traceability for outsourcing small-scale data linear aggregation (BAT-LA) in the smart grid. The formal definition, system model and security model are presented. Then, a concrete BAT-LA protocol is designed by using the elliptic curve cryptography and proxy re-encryption. Through security analysis and performance analysis, the designed BAT-LA protocol is provably secure and efficient.