Title: Cryptoanalysis and improvement of smart prepayment meter protocol in standard Q/GDW 365

Authors: Jinfeng Yang; Rong Cheng; Wenming Liu; Yong Xiao; Fangguo Zhang

Addresses: Electric Power Research Institute of Guangdong Power Grid Corporation, Guangzhou 510080, China ' School of Information Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China ' School of Information Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China ' Electric Power Research Institute of Guangdong Power Grid Corporation, Guangzhou 510080, China ' School of Information Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China

Abstract: IC card prepayment meter has gradually replaced the traditional electricity meter which is operated and controlled by human resources, due to its convenience, efficiency and security. The electricity of user is automatically controlled by the interactions between the meter and user card. In 2009, State Grid Corporation of China worked out the series of standards for smart electricity meters. Q/GDW 365 is one of these standards which explain the security techniques of information interchanges authentication specification for smart electricity meters. The standard describes the processes of user establishing an account, recharging and using the electricity, user closing an account. We analyse the security of this standard and find that the standard suffers from theft of electricity as the user card may be analysed by side-channel attacks. We give out an improved protocol to this problem, and extensive analysis shows that our protocol can resist the side-channel attacks.

Keywords: cryptoanalysis; smart electricity meters; Q/GDW 365; side-channel attacks; smart meters; prepayment meters; China; electricity theft; meter security; cryptography.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2013.054489

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2013 Vol.4 No.1, pp.40 - 46

Received: 03 Oct 2011
Accepted: 29 Feb 2012

Published online: 18 Sep 2014 *

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