A Blockchain-Based Privacy-Preserving Scheme for Smart Grids

Abstract

The application of smart grids helps optimize electric dispatching and troubleshoot power interruption. Although it provides convenience to our lives, it also causes certain security risks. At present, open wireless sensor network is adopted in smart grids and is vulnerable to cyber attacks, resulting in network congestion and leakage of users' private information. Therefore, an attacker may infer users' identities, behavior and preferences by analyzing the real-time power consumption, which is an immediate threat to the users' privacy. To address this issue, we propose a privacy-preserving scheme based on blockchain and group signature to protect the privacy of users' identities while enhancing the security of power systems. On one hand, smart meters serve as nodes in the blockchain system and ensure data consistency through consensus mechanism. On the other hand, as group members, smart meters make sure of the anonymity of end-users by generating group signatures for power data. Security analysis shows that, our scheme achieves security in terms of privacy preserving, transaction verification and traceability, and is secure against common cyber attacks. In addition, the performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme is practical in the sense of consensus delay and throughput.