Abstract
This paper outlines the need for security on the smart grid, specifically for Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs). These devices are targeted due to their criticality to the smart grid and the insecure communication protocols used. Common attacks on these devices target the data sent between them. As such, integrity-based attacks are the focus of this paper, more specifically on False Data Injection attacks (FDIAs) and Time Synchronisation Attacks (TSAs). Security solutions are proposed throughout literature from mitigation and protection techniques to detection and resolution techniques. To secure the PMU and PDC, this paper proposes an authentication protocol, utilising Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs). PUFs are utilised to ensure device-specific authentication, in addition to the use of other cryptographic techniques including fuzzy extractors, nonces, encryption algorithms, and identifiers. A testbed was developed, on which the protocol was implemented and tested against the integrity-based attacks, namely FDIA and TSA. Informal and formal security analyses were performed on the protocol, finding that the protocol was secure against multiple attacks, including the FDIA and TSA, and implemented mutual authentication and forward secrecy. The formal security analysis was implemented with Proverif, a software used to prove the security of authentication protocols. The informal security analysis is provided as a logical sequence to prove the protocol’s security against attacks and inclusion of security proofs. A performance analysis was performed to ensure the protocol had low enough computation, communication, and storage overheads.
Keywords
authentication, phasor measurement unit, physically unclonable function, phasor data concentrator, false data injection, time synchronisation attack
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Date of Publication
6-30-2026
Publication Title
European Conference on Cyber Warfare & Security
Publisher
Academic Conferences International Limited
School
School of Science
RAS ID
99632
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Griffiths, T., Ahmed, M., Islam, C., & Haskell-Dowland, P. (2026). A physically unclonable function authentication protocol to secure IEEE C37.118 communications. The Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Cyber Warfare & Security (ECCWS 2026) (303-312). Academic Conferences International Limited. .https://doi.org/10.34190/eccws.25.1.4693