This demonstration presents an Internet of Things (IoT) device built around a secure element. According to the Blockchain IoT (BIoT) paradigm, it is able to generate Ethereum transactions of which data are sensor information or actuator states. All network communications are controlled by the secure element through the TLS pre-shared-key protocol. Specific requests are exported from secure element and unlock protected resources such as signing procedure. This avoids the misuse of the private key required for blockchain transaction generation.
Mikhak Samadi, Sushmita Ruj, Henry Schriemer, Melike Erol‐Kantarci
Demand response (DR) has been studied widely in the smart grid literature, however, there is still a significant gap in approaches that address security, privacy, and robustness of settlement processes simultaneously. The need for security and robustness emerges as a vital property, as Internet of Things (IoT) devices become part of the smart grid; in the form of smart meters, home energy management systems (HEMSs), intelligent transformers, and so on. In this paper, we use energy blockchain to secure energy transactions among customers and the utility. In addition, we formulate a mixed-strategy stochastic game model to address uncertainties in DR contributions of agents and achieve optimal demand response decisions. This model utilizes the processing hardware of customers for block mining, stores customer DR agreements as distributed ledgers, and offers a smart contract and consensus algorithm for energy transaction validation. We use a real dataset of residential demand profiles and photovoltaic (PV) generation to validate the performance of the proposed scheme. The results show the impact of electric vehicle (EV) discharging and customer demand reduction on increasing the probability of successful block mining and improving customer profits. Moreover, the results demonstrate the security and robustness of our consensus algorithm for detecting malicious activities.
Smart grids are suscceptible to security vulnerabilities of cyber-physical systems due to the heterogeneity of their interconnected components. There are high risks associated with potential attacks targeting the two-way communication between the smart meters and the utility servers. It is vital to ensure that data communicated between consumers and the utility is not tampered with and is authentic, private, and available. Conventional security measures in traditional communication and network systems fail to secure the data communication aspect in the complex network that composes the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). In this work, we propose ECC: a novel prevention approach based on Ethereum smart contracts, asymmetric cryptographic functions, and cloud services for securing the two-way communication between smart meters and utility servers. Ethereum blockchain is utilized as a building block where communicated data is treated as transactions encrypted and stored in a distributed fashion to ensure data availability, confidentiality, and privacy. We also augment the Ethereum architecture with cloud services to extend the number of allowable transactions, ensure the availability of the electricity data, and reduce the cost associated with Ethereum transactions. The conducted experiments illustrate the efficacy of ECC in terms of the achieved security properties. This paper shows that the Ethereum Blockchain coupled with Cloud services can improve the efficiency of a system solely based on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Raifa Akkaoui, Alexandru Ştefanov, Peter Pálenský, Dick Epema
The solar industry in residential areas has been witnessing an astonishing growth worldwide. At the heart of this transformation, affecting the edge of the electricity grid, reside smart inverters (SIs). These IoT-enabled devices aim to introduce a certain degree of intelligence to conventional inverters by integrating various grid support capabilities (e.g., voltage and frequency control). However, with the remarkable automation of these devices come enormous security risks. Thus, rising rates of vulnerabilities have increased the necessity for designing resilient, auditable, and secure SIs’ firmware over the air (FOTA) amendment schemes suitable for this heterogeneous SIs-based ecosystem. In this regard, we propose leveraging blockchain as an innovative technology to guarantee these cybersecurity requirements. In this article, we present the design of a distributed FOTA scheme, namely, RASSIFAB, governing the process of amending SIs’ firmware within residential areas in an immutable and scalable manner. The scheme was implemented on a blockchain test network to assess its functionalities and performance. We also carried out a security evaluation to determine whether RASSIFAB is resistant to various identified threats. The obtained results confirm that the scheme is efficient and sound. They also indicate that RASSIFAB ensures reliable and authentic firmware amendments even with malicious insiders, differentiating our framework from the existing ones.
An increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) applications are based on a federated environment.Examples include the creation of federations of NATO countries and non-NATO entities participating in missions (Federated Mission Networking) or the interaction of civilian services and the military when providing Humanitarian Assistance And Disaster Relief.Federations are often formed on an ad hoc basis, with the primary goal of combining forces in a federated mission environment at any time, on short notice, and with optimization of the resources involved.One of the leading security challenges in a federated environment of separate IoT administrative domains is effective identity and access management, which is the basis for establishing a relationship of trust and secure communication between IoT devices belonging to different partners.When carrying out missions involving the military and ensuring security, meeting requirements for immediate interoperability is important.In the paper, an attempt has been made to develop a system architecture framework for secure and reliable data streams distribution in a multi-organizational federation environment, where data authentication is based on IoT device identity (fingerprint).Moreover, a hardware-software IoT gateway has been proposed for the verification process and the integration of Hyperledger Fabric's distributed ledger technology, the Apache Kafka message broker, and data-processing microservices implemented using the Kafka Streams API library.The performance tests conducted confirm the suitability of the developed system framework for processing and distributing audiovideo data in a federation IoT environment.Also, a high-level security and reliability assessment was conducted in the paper.
Guoshu Huang, Tingting Han, Dongsheng Li, Chenchen Han
As the power consumption increases year by year, the traditional power network can no longer meet the new demands of power grid development. In this context, smart grid is proposed as the next-generation grid development direction. However, the informationization of power grid will certainly bring the explosive growth of customers' power consumption data, which brings challenges to the security and management of power data. Blockchain, as a distributed cryptographic ledger, is considered as a powerful tool to ensure data security. This paper first analyses the current risks and problems of electricity customers data security in smart grids and proposes to solve them with blockchain. Then, this paper proposes a secure blockchain-based electricity customers data storage scheme (BECDS) and gives its framework. Finally, this paper uses cryptographic vector commitment to construct a distributed and verifiable data storage scheme based on blockchain, and proves that the scheme proposed in this paper is secure in the scheme evaluation.
To effectively regulate the energy supply, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) deployment is gaining momentum in various parts of the world. Energy distributors, service providers, and consumers must work together to address several issues. All the transactions need to be documented properly and securely. Third parties can be trusted in those transactions by using blockchain. With the deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and distributed ledgers, blockchain may aid in safeguarding and facilitating the movement of data. This chapter discusses the viability of utilizing blockchain for advanced metering infrastructure and the security risks and threat landscape.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a collection of interconnected smart sensors and actuators with industrial software tools and applications. IIoT aims to enhance manufacturing and industrial processes by capturing and analyzing real-time industrial data. However, the heterogeneous and homogeneous nature of IIoT networks makes them vulnerable to several security threats. As data is transmitted over an insecure communication medium, intruders may intercept communication among different entities and perform malicious activities. Consequently, ensuring the security and privacy of data transmitted in IIoT networks is essential. Motivated by the aforementioned challenges, this article presents a deep-learning-integrated blockchain framework for securing IIoT networks. Specifically, first, we design a private blockchain-based secure communication among the IIoT entities using session-based mutual authentication and key agreement mechanism. In this approach, the Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism is used for verification of the transactions and block creation based on the voting of miners over the cloud server. Second, we design a novel deep-learning-based intrusion detection system that combines contractive sparse autoencoder (CSAE), attention-based bidirectional long short-term memory (ABiLSTM) networks, and softmax classifier for cyberattack detection. The practical implementation of blockchain and deep-learning techniques proves the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Xiaole Su, Yuanchao Hu, Liu Wei, Zhipeng Jiang · 7 authors
Abstract The extension of emerging renewable energy sources such as wind and water turbines, solar panels, and the increasing usage of electric vehicles requires the supply and distribution of energy in a small device on local scale and it has created new methods of supplying and selling electricity. Middle buyers and end users can obtain the local energy with the peer‐to‐peer trading method in this large and hierarchical market. This method enables market to manage and exchange the electricity between major suppliers and medium and local levels. Blockchain technology is developing in peer‐to‐peer exchange of electricity and acts as a reliable, efficient, and safe technology in the electricity trading market. In this method, while preserving the privacy of electricity users, by using smart contracts and by removing intermediaries in the energy supply and demand market, direct commercial interactions between energy suppliers and consumers are done. The blockchain technology, while creating trust between the parties in the energy market, reduces the cost of electricity trading and increases its scalability with using the intermediate energy aggregators. In this research, the blockchain‐based model, is presented for distribution and peer‐to‐peer transactions in the energy market. The suggested model provides the possibility of registration low‐cost instant transactions at the power grid in any specific period of time. The above method, unlike periodic payments, provides immediate access to bills and small payments. Since the transactions outside the blockchain chain are not recorded, this system guarantees its honest and independent operation without fraud and failure. The smart contract method based on blockchain, reduces the transaction fees and speeds up electricity trading. Also, the experimental investigation in 20 nodes shows the time required to determine the exchange contract in the blockchain method. The average is improved by 49.7% in this method. Also, the negotiation convergence time has become 47% faster.
Dhiah el Diehn I. Abou-Tair, Raad Haddad, Ala’ Khalifeh, Sahel Alouneh · 5 authors
Security and privacy are among the main challenges in the systems of systems. The distributed ledger technology and self-sovereign identity pave the way to empower systems and users' security and privacy. By utilizing both technologies, this paper proposes a distributed and self-sovereign-based framework for systems of systems to increase the security of such a system and maintain users' privacy. We conducted an extensive security analysis of the proposed framework using a threat model based on the STRIDE framework, highlighting the mitigation provided by the proposed framework compared to the traditional SoS security. The analysis shows the feasibility of the proposed framework, affirming its capability to establish a secure and privacy-preserving identity management system for systems of systems.
Raymond Borges Hink, Aaron Werth, Gary Hahn, Emilio C. Piesciorovsky · 5 authors
Grid modernization has impeded innovative power grid applications and energy resources that are increasingly distributed. Blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to enhance the resilience of the electric infrastructure, particularly in a decentralized and distributed environment. The benefits of blockchain are to ensure asset information and lifecycle events are secure and traceable and identify potential malicious modification of data. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed a framework, Cyber Grid Guard (CGG), incorporating blockchain. The system implements a low-energy, fast, and robust enhancement to system trustworthiness within and across electric grid systems, including substations, control centers, and metering infrastructures. Currently, one of the major concerns is supply chain attacks. There have been several recent attacks that have significantly impacted critical infrastructures and organizations around the world. This document focuses on how CGG can be used to address the supply chain issue.
Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled Smart Grid (SG) network is envisioned as the next-generation network for intelligent and efficient electric power transmission. In SG environment, the Smart Meters (SMs) mostly exchange services and data from Service Providers (SPs) via insecure public channel. This makes the entire SG ecosystem vulnerable to various security threats. Motivated from the aforementioned challenges, we incorporate Digital Twin (DT) technology, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Deep Learning (DL) and blockchain into the design of a novel SG network. Specifically, a secure communication channel is first designed using an authentication method based on blockchain technology that has the ability to withstand a number of well-known assaults. Second, a new DL architecture that includes a self-attention mechanism, a Bidirectional-Gated Recurrent Unit (Bi-GRU) model, fully connected layers, and a softmax classifier is designed to enhance the attack detection process in SG environments. To deliver low latency and real-time services, the SDN is next employed as the network’s backbone to send requests from SMs to a global SDN controller. DT technology is finally integrated into the SDN control plane, which stores the operating states and behavior models of SMs and communicates with SMs. The efficiency of the proposed framework is demonstrated by the blockchain implementation used in the SG network to assess computing time for the various numbers of transactions per block. Finally, the numerical results based on the N-BaIoT dataset shows better intrusion detection.
This article presents an umbrella review of blockchain-based smart grid applications. By umbrella review, we mean that our review is based on systematic reviews of this topic. We aim to synthesize the findings from these systematic reviews and gain deeper insights into this discipline. After studying the systematic reviews, we find it imperative to provide a concise and authoritative description of blockchain technology because many technical inaccuracies permeate many of these papers. This umbrella review is guided by five research questions. The first research question concerns the types of blockchain-based smart grid applications. Existing systematic reviews rarely used a systematic method to classify these applications. To address this issue, we propose a taxonomy of these applications, first by differentiating them based on whether the application is focusing on functional or non-functional aspects of smart grid operations, and then by the specific functions or perspectives that the application aims to implement or enhance. The second research question concerns the roles that blockchain technology plays in smart grid applications. We synthesize the findings by identifying the most prominent benefits that blockchain technology could bring to these applications. We also take the opportunity to point out several common technical mistakes that pervade the blockchain literature, such as equating all forms of blockchains to data immutability. The third research question concerns the guidelines for deciding whether a blockchain-based solution would be useful to address the needs of smart grids. We synthesize the findings by proposing benefit-based guidelines. The fourth research question concerns the maturity levels of blockchain-based smart grid applications. We differentiate between academic-led and industry-led projects. We propose a five-level scale to evaluate the maturity levels. The ranking of the industry-led projects is performed through our own investigation. Our investigation shows that more than half of the industry-led projects mentioned in the systematic reviews are no longer active. Furthermore, although there are numerous news reports and a large number of academic papers published on blockchain-based smart grid applications, very few have been successfully embraced by the industry. The fifth research question concerns the open research issues in the development of blockchain-based smart grid applications. We synthesize the findings and provide our own analysis.
As our reliance on digital infrastructure and the transmission of sensitive information grows, the importance of effective cybersecurity measures becomes increasingly urgent. This study explores the efficacy of honeypots and the MITRE ATT& CK framework in detecting adversary behaviors in ethereum, smtp, ftp, and ldap attacks. By deploying honeypots, we gathered a diverse range of attack data, revealing prevalent patterns like phishing, scamming, account hijacking in ethereum, bruteforce in ftp, and port scanning in ldap. Mapping this data to the MITRE ATT& CK framework enabled the identification of adversary TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), informing security strategies and mitigating future attacks. Our findings highlight the significance of employing honeypots to identify and analyze adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This underscores the importance of continual research to further improve our comprehension of evolving cyber threats. –
Mark C. Ballandies, Hongyang Wang, Andrew Chung Chee Law, Joshua C. Yang · 6 authors
As digitalization and technological advancements continue to shape the infrastructure landscape, the emergence of blockchain-based decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) has gained prominence. However, a systematic categorization of DePIN components and their interrelationships is still missing. To address this gap, we conduct a literature review and analysis of existing frameworks and derived a taxonomy of DePIN systems from a conceptual architecture. Our taxonomy encompasses three key dimensions: distributed ledger technology, cryptoeconomic design and physicial infrastructure network. Within each dimension, we identify and define relevant components and attributes, establishing a clear hierarchical structure. Moreover, we illustrate the relationships and dependencies among the identified components, highlighting the interplay between governance models, hardware architectures, networking protocols, token mechanisms, and distributed ledger technologies. This taxonomy provides a foundation for understanding and classifying diverse DePIN networks, serving as a basis for future research and facilitating knowledge exchange, fostering collaboration and standardization within the emerging field of decentralized physical infrastructure networks.
Energy demand is increasing rapidly due to rapid growth and industrialization. It is becoming more and more complex to manage generation and distribution due to the diversification of energy sources to minimize carbon emissions. Smart grids manage reliable power generation and distribution efficiently and cater to a large geographical area and population, but their centralized structure makes them vulnerable. Cybersecurity threats have become a significant concern with these systems’ increasing complexity and connectivity. Further transmission losses and its vulnerability to the single point of failure (SPOF) are also major concerns. Microgrids are becoming an alternative to large, centralized smart grids that can be managed locally with fewer user bases and are safe from SPOF. Microgrids cater to small geographical areas and populations that can be easily managed at the local level and utilized for different sources of energy, like renewable energy. A small group of consumers and producers are involved, but microgrids can also be connected with smart grids if required to exchange the excess energy. Still, these are also vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, as in the case of smart grids, and lack trust due to their decentralized nature without any trusted third party. Blockchain (BC) technology can address the trust and cybersecurity challenges in the energy sector. This article proposes a framework for implementing a BC-based microgrid system for managing all the aspects of a microgrid system, including peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading, Renewable Energy Certificate (REC), and decentralized energy trading, that can be utilized in the case of Saudi Arabia. It can integrate cybersecurity standards and protocols, as well as the utilization of smart contracts, for more secure and reliable energy generation and distribution with transparency.
Soosan Naderi Mighan, Jelena Mišić, Vojislav B. Mišić, Xiaolin Chang
In this paper, we analyze the performance of Ethereum data distribution network using a probabilistic model which allows accurate modeling of data propagation but also of forking, which happens when the blockchain maintained by the network temporarily splits into multiple versions due to a disagreement over the validity of a particular block. We also investigate the duration of inconsistent states of the ledger, which refers to the amount of time that the network remains split or partitioned. Finally, we model the block withholding attack and block slowdown attack, and analyze their impact on network performance of the network in terms of quality indicators such as block delivery time, the duration of ledger inconsistency, and forking probability. We also propose countermeasures for the block withholding attack.
Emilio C. Piesciorovsky, Gary Hahn, Raymond Borges Hink, Aaron Werth · 5 authors
Electrical utilities continue to deploy more intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) inside and outside electrical substation, and are associated with customer-owned distributed energy resources (DERs). The integrity and confidentiality of data from these IEDs, like power meters and protective relays, is crucial. Blockchain technology could improve the resilience of microgrids by improving the security of data sharing. The penetration of customer-owned DERs (renewable energy sources) and the increasing deployment of IEDs can lead to integrate power system applications with Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). In this study, we implemented the electrical faulted phase detection and power quality monitoring algorithms with a Cyber Grid Guard (CGG) system using DLT. In addition, the DERs (wind turbine farms) use case and protective relay cyber-event tests were assessed, by using the CGG system with DLT. In the experimental model, the testbed was created by using a real-time simulator and CGG system with power meters/ protective relays in-the-loop. The data collected from the CGG system and IEDs were compared with the same time stamp source. These results had shown the successful assessment of protection, control and monitoring applications using a CGG system with DLT. In the future, the ESGT with DERs and the CGG system will be used in other power system applications, based on implementing smart contracts between electrical utilities with customer-owned DERs.
Data aggregation plays a crucial role in smart grid communication as it enables the collection of data in an energy-efficient manner. However, the widespread deployment of smart meters has raised significant concerns regarding the privacy of users' personal data. Therefore, in this paper, we present an efficient and privacy-preserving data aggregation and trust management scheme (PATM) for an IoT-enabled smart grid based on smart contract. Firstly, we propose a five-layer architecture for smart grid communication to support secure and efficient data aggregation and management. Under the architecture, the Boneh-Goh-Nissim cryptosystem with blind factor is improved to facilitate privacy protection. In addition, the tamper-evident nature of blockchain is utilized for effective data management. Our designs also enhance the resistance to differential attack and prevent privacy breaches during the aggregation process. Detailed security proof and theoretical analysis confirm that our PATM can satisfies the necessary security and privacy requirements while maintaining the required efficiency for smart grid operations. Furthermore, comparative experiments demonstrate that PATM outperforms other proposed work in terms of storage cost, computational complexity, and utility of differential privacy.
Energy trading is currently transitioning from traditional centralized markets to decentralized peer to peer (P2P) solutions. More and more P2P projects are operating with the Blockchain technology, hosting e-auctions for prosumers who are part of microgrids and operating in the same network. This way of energy trading might be ideal for trading types of renewable energy with high predictability but the same does not apply for lower predictability types, such as solar energy. A critical issue of P2P energy trading markets, that operate only in the context of local energy communities, is the availability of resources when every prosumer adapts the same role in the market, thus leading to either large excess or deficit of energy. This paper introduces a blockchain-based semi-decentralized (hybrid) energy trading market that consists of more than one microgrids and each microgrid is composed of prosumers who produce and trade energy with others within their microgrid. Furthermore, inter-microgrid energy trading can be initiated, as well as trading with the main grid, when there are unmet energy requests. In order to ensure safety and security between untrusted parties, transactions happen in a permissioned blockchain network. As an alternative way to trade energy this solution proposes along with the Fungible Tokens, the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) that enclose amounts of energy to be used when needed. Each microgrid is equipped with an appropriately sized battery, a repository to maintain profits, and is coordinated by an administration manager, who is responsible for transactions happening outside of the microgrid.
The large-scale penetration of distributed power systems in the power grid makes the safe and stable operation of the power grid a difficult problem. The distributed control strategy is more suitable for distributed power management than centralized control. However, distributed control that relies on network communication is vulnerable to network attacks, so research on security control strategies is very urgent. Blockchain technology is widely used in the field of energy trading due to its special security mechanism, distributed ledger, and decentralization. It is difficult to develop in the control field due to performance and latency issues. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based distributed control architecture for island microgrids. Through ingenious structural design, the communication security of the blockchain is fully utilized, and troublesome on-chain calculations are avoided. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of this architecture.