Ömer Aslan, Semih Serkant Aktuğ, Merve Ozkan-Okay, Abdullah Asım Yılmaz · 5 authors
Internet usage has grown exponentially, with individuals and companies performing multiple daily transactions in cyberspace rather than in the real world. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated this process. As a result of the widespread usage of the digital environment, traditional crimes have also shifted to the digital space. Emerging technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), social media, wireless communication, and cryptocurrencies are raising security concerns in cyberspace. Recently, cyber criminals have started to use cyber attacks as a service to automate attacks and leverage their impact. Attackers exploit vulnerabilities that exist in hardware, software, and communication layers. Various types of cyber attacks include distributed denial of service (DDoS), phishing, man-in-the-middle, password, remote, privilege escalation, and malware. Due to new-generation attacks and evasion techniques, traditional protection systems such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, antivirus software, access control lists, etc., are no longer effective in detecting these sophisticated attacks. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find innovative and more feasible solutions to prevent cyber attacks. The paper first extensively explains the main reasons for cyber attacks. Then, it reviews the most recent attacks, attack patterns, and detection techniques. Thirdly, the article discusses contemporary technical and nontechnical solutions for recognizing attacks in advance. Using trending technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, cloud platforms, big data, and blockchain can be a promising solution for current and future cyber attacks. These technological solutions may assist in detecting malware, intrusion detection, spam identification, DNS attack classification, fraud detection, recognizing hidden channels, and distinguishing advanced persistent threats. However, some promising solutions, especially machine learning and deep learning, are not resistant to evasion techniques, which must be considered when proposing solutions against intelligent cyber attacks.
Smart meters in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) collect fine-grained, real-time power consumption data may result in user privacy leakage. Aiming at the problem that existing privacy protection schemes cannot resist quantum attacks, an antiquantum privacy protection scheme in AMI of smart grid based on consortium blockchain and ring learning with errors (RLWE) is proposed. The scheme has the following contributions. First, the RLWE-based secure communication scheme is designed in this article, which ensures the resistance of the scheme to quantum attacks. Second, all smart meters in AMI use anonymous identity to communicate with the control center, and the fine-grained power consumption data is also encrypted and digitally signed to prevent user privacy leakage and tampering of power consumption data. And the scheme does not use bilinear pairings and exponential operations and has efficient computational performance. Third, a two-tier consortium blockchain storage system consisted of regional gateways and data aggregators are designed to eliminate the single point of failure problems of the data aggregators. The practical byzantine fault tolerance consensus mechanism is improved to reduce the communication cost in the consensus process. The scheme's security is proven theoretically, and the experimental results show that the scheme has a low computational cost.
Decentralized energy management can preserve the privacy of individual energy systems while mitigating computational and communication burdens. However, most decentralized energy management methods are partially decentralized and cannot ensure information exchange security. Therefore, this paper provides a secure fully decentralized energy management by using blockchain. First, a fully decentralized energy management framework using the optimality condition decomposition (OCD) is provided, in which individual energy system operators only exchange the boundary information with their peers rather than submitting proprietary information to a centralized system operator. Then, an asynchronous mechanism is proposed for updating the information exchange in OCD, enabling the proposed decentralized management to work under potential communication latency or interruption. Furthermore, the blockchain-based framework with state machine replication (SMR) based consensus algorithm is provided to safeguard the information exchange among individual energy systems in a secure and tamper-proof manner. The proposed decentralized energy management is tested on a multi-energy system with seven subsystems and a real-world multi-energy system in North China. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in privacy protection and data security enhancement. The proposed method can prevent the cost increase caused by cheating activities, which in some subsystems can reach 17.6%. Additionally, the proposed fully decentralized method outperforms the partially decentralized method by 37.7% in reducing computation time. Also demonstrated are the computational precision, scalability and adaptability of the proposed method.1
Industrial Control Systems (ICS) have specific data requirements in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). Lost or delayed critical data, such as control signals, can damage widespread production, such as machine performance. The problem is compounded in the next-generation Industry 4.0, where the operations will be even less human-dependent, involving multiple organizations. Moreover, the communication aspects across multistakeholders require a disaggregated approach contrary to the current closed ICS architecture.This paper presents a framework for decentralization of ICS called Operations and Control Networks (OCN) in which ‘contracts’ are the basic units of abstraction to exchange information with trust and precision between different actors. In the lower layers, High-Precision Communication (HPC) contracts execute control functions with requested service level guarantees in the network. A high-level trusted delegation of tasks is executed as smart contracts using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to enable multi-stakeholder auditability and accountability.
Prince Silas Kwesi Oberko Prince Silas Kwesi Oberko, Tianang Yao Prince Silas Kwesi Oberko, Hu Xiong Tianang Yao, Saru Kumari Hu Xiong · 5 authors
<p>The smart energy system (SES) encourages data administration and information services developments, particularly smart grids. Presently, numerous SESs cloud environments are accessible to smart grids. Nonetheless, because of the semi-credible character of the SES cloud environments, achieving secured access, information storage, updates, deletion, tracing, and revocation of ill-disposed clients is a genuine concern. In this publication, an Ethereum blockchain-oriented secured access regulation design upholding traceability and revocability is offered for smart grids to resolve these problems. The blockchain implements unified identity verification and saves all public-keys, users&rsquo; attribute sets, and revocable lists. The system administrator creates system parameters and sends private-keys to users. The domain administrator prepares the domain&rsquo;s security and privacy-preservation policies and executes encryption procedures. If the attributes correspond with the access policy and the user&rsquo;s ID is unrevoked, they could acquire interim-decryption capabilities from the edge/cloud servers. Tracking malevolent users for revocation is applicable throughout all stages, ensuring the system is secured under Decisional-Bilinear-Diffie-Hellman (DBDH) complex theory and can withstand multi-attacks. Analysis revealed the size of the public/private keys to be shorter, contrary to relevant schemes. The overhead duration is less for generating the public-key, data encryption, and decryption phases. </p> <p>&nbsp;</p>
Bin Qian Bin Qian, Yi Luo Bin Qian, Jiaxiang Ou Yi Luo, Yong Xiao Jiaxiang Ou · 5 authors
<p>As a new-style smart grid, Internet of Energy (IoE) is important and how to provide its trusted time-stamping service becomes a hit. For example, an energy provider needs to prove he/she transferred some energy to a consumer at some time. Nevertheless, traditional trusted time-stamping scheme with a central service provider is not suitable for IoE. Some researchers try to solve this problem via blockchain, due to its decentralization, traceability and tamper-proof. However, there are still chal&shy;lenges when using blockchain. Some have to introduce another kind of central participant. Some have to face the problem of accuracy and availability when using the Bitcoin blockchain. Some have to generate too many extra transactions. To address the aforementioned problems, we propose a fully decentralized trusted time-stamping scheme without any central participant and fulfill six design goals. Compared with the state-of-the-art blockchain-based time-stamping scheme named Chronos, our scheme enjoys less cryptographic operations. We then tested our scheme in the development (local) network and two live networks of the Ethereum. The experiment shows that we have implemented a simple, effective, accurate and low-cost decentralized trusted time-stamping scheme.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>
Blockchain technology creates a distributed ledger of transactions through interconnected blocks which are decentralized, transparent, immutable, and automated. The use of blockchain solutions and applications is growing rapidly which include finance, supply chain management, digital identity, energy, healthcare, and real estate. Due to the rapid economic recovery, global weather variations, maintenance delays caused by the pandemic, and earlier decisions by oil and gas companies to cut investments, energy costs have increased since 2021. Through limiting consumer prices and compensating energy providers for the shortfall, governments are aiming to lessen the impact of increase energy prices on citizens and businesses. The utilization of energy using Blockchain technology, where peer-topeer (P2P) energy trading on local and global energy markets could be enabled, can be an enabler to resolve energy shortage and increasing prices. Currently, National Information Security Standards and International Information Security Standards lack a framework to manage and govern information security controls for P2P energy trading using Blockchain technology. This paper proposes information security controls to complement existing Standards that will enable proper governance of P2P energy trading and discusses associated risks.
This research paper reviews the potential of smart contracts for responsible AI with a focus on frameworks, hardware, energy efficiency, and cyberattacks. Smart contracts are digital agreements that are executed by a blockchain, and they have the potential to revolutionize the way we conduct business by increasing transparency and trust. When it comes to responsible AI systems, smart contracts can play a crucial role in ensuring that the terms and conditions of the contract are fair and transparent as well as that any automated decision-making is explainable and auditable. Furthermore, the energy consumption of blockchain networks has been a matter of concern; this article explores the energy efficiency element of smart contracts. Energy efficiency in smart contracts may be enhanced by the use of techniques such as off-chain processing and sharding. The study emphasises the need for careful auditing and testing of smart contract code in order to protect against cyberattacks along with the use of secure libraries and frameworks to lessen the likelihood of smart contract vulnerabilities.
Seyed Amir Alavi, Mehrnaz Javadipour, Ardavan Rahimian, Kamyar Mehran
Abstract The privacy of electricity consumers has become one of the most critical subjects in designing smart meters and their proliferation. In this work, a multilayer architecture has been proposed for anonymous data collection from smart meters, which provides: (1) The anonymity of information for third‐party data consumers; (2) Secure communication to utility provider network for billing purposes; (3) Online control of data sharing for end‐users; (4) Low communication costs based on available Internet of things (IoT) communication protocols. The core elements of this architecture are, first, the digital twin equivalent of the cyber‐physical system and, second, the Tangle distributed ledger network with IOTA cryptocurrency. In this architecture, digital twin models are updated in real‐time by information received from trusted nodes of the Tangle distributed network anonymously. A small‐scale laboratory prototype based on this architecture has been developed using the dSPACE SCALEXIO real‐time simulator and open‐source software tools to prove the feasibility of the proposed solution. The numerical results confirm that after a few seconds of anomaly detection, the microgrid was fully stabilized around its operating point with less than 5% deviation during the transition time.
P Nirmal Kumar, Blessy Sharon Gem Johnson Selvakumar, R Viji, K. Rajkumar · 6 authors
Among the most effective methods Exchanging Energy Management Smart Grid (SG) enhances user involvement in energy production and it creates decentralized power sector systems with peer-to-peer technique (P2P). In Peer to peer, prosumers produce electricity on-site using Sustainable Energy sources. Next it is traded with customers in the surrounding area. Peer-to-peer makes it easier for people to interchange energy in the Transactive Energy Management system's regional micro-energy markets. This study suggests a block chain-based Decentralized and apparent Peer-to-peer Energy Trading (DA-P2PET) to solve the identified issues. Its target is to decrease grid energy generation and raising the gain for both consumer and prosumer by flexible price system. The DA-P2PET system conducts peer-to-peer energy trading using Smart Contracts built on the Ethereum block chain and the Interplanetary File System (IP. In the suggested DA-P2PET system, the Ethereum SCs are created to carry out P2P in real time. In comparison to existing methods, the DA-P2PET scheme is rated based on numerous criteria including profit creation, data transfer speed, networking access
The power system and markets have become increasingly complex along with an effort to digitalize the energy sector. Accessing flexibility services, in particular, through digital energy platforms, has enabled communication between multiple entities within the energy system and streamlined flexibility market operations. However, digitalizing these vast and complex systems introduces new cybersecurity and privacy concerns, which must be properly addressed during the design of the digital energy platform ecosystems. In this study, the potential and operation of digital flexibility platforms are reviewed, and a generic architecture with/without a combined distributed ledger technology framework is proposed. Finally, concerns about cybersecurity and privacy on digital energy platforms are discussed.
In order to reduce the system instability caused by credit risk in microgrid transactions in the blockchain, we propose a smart contract microgrid transaction model considering reputation value. Considering the instability caused by credit risk, the reputation factor is introduced to ensure the secure and stable operation of the microgrid energy trading system. The effectiveness of the scheme is verified by comparing traditional electricity trading and the trading with the introduced credit value scheme through simulation experiments.
Tehseen Mazhar, Hafiz Muhammad Irfan, Sunawar Khan, Inayatul Haq · 7 authors
Smart grids are rapidly replacing conventional networks on a worldwide scale. A smart grid has drawbacks, just like any other novel technology. A smart grid cyberattack is one of the most challenging things to stop. The biggest problem is caused by millions of sensors constantly sending and receiving data packets over the network. Cyberattacks can compromise the smart grid’s dependability, availability, and privacy. Users, the communication network of smart devices and sensors, and network administrators are the three layers of an innovative grid network vulnerable to cyberattacks. In this study, we look at the many risks and flaws that can affect the safety of critical, innovative grid network components. Then, to protect against these dangers, we offer security solutions using different methods. We also provide recommendations for reducing the chance that these three categories of cyberattacks may occur.
In the current era, the skyrocketing demand for energy necessitates a powerful mechanism to mitigate the supply–demand gap in intelligent energy infrastructure, i.e., the smart grid. To handle this issue, an intelligent and secure energy management system (EMS) could benefit end-consumers participating in the Demand–Response (DR) program. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed a real-time and secure incentive-based EMS for smart grid, i.e., RI-EMS approach using Reinforcement Learning (RL) and blockchain technology. In the RI-EMS approach, we proposed a novel reward mechanism for better convergence of the RL-based model using a Q-learning approach based on the greedy policy that guides the RL-agent for faster convergence. Then, the proposed RI-EMS approach designed a real-time incentive mechanism to minimize energy consumption in peak hours and reduce end-consumers’ energy bills to provide incentives to the end-consumers. Experimental results show that the proposed RI-EMS approach induces end-consumer participation and increases customer profitabilities compared to existing approaches considering the different performance evaluation metrics such as energy consumption for end-consumers, energy consumption reduction, and total cost comparison to end-consumers. Furthermore, blockchain-based results are simulated and analyzed with the help of deployed smart contracts in a Remix Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with the parameters such as transaction efficiency and data storage cost.
Rajeev Kumar Gupta, Vedant Chawla, R. K. Pateriya, Piyush Kumar Shukla · 6 authors
The threat of cyber-attacks is ever increasing in today’s society. There is a clear need for better and more effective defensive tools. Intrusion detection can be defined as the detection of anomalous behavior either in the host or in the network. An intrusion detection system can be used to identify the anomalous behavior of the system. The two major tasks of intrusion detection are to monitor data and raise an alert to the system administrators when an intrusion takes place. The current intrusion detection system is incapable of tackling sophisticated attacks which take place on the entire network containing large number of nodes while maintaining a low number of login attempts on each node in the system. A collaborative intrusion detection system (CIDS) was designed to remove the inefficiency of the current intrusion detection system which failed to detect coordinated distributed attacks. The main problem in the CIDS is the concept of trust. Hosts in the network need to trust the data sent by other peers in the network. To bring in the concept of trust and implement the proof-of-concept, blockchain was used. Pluggable authentication modules (PAM) were also used to track login activity securely before an intruder could modify the login activity. To implement blockchain, an Ethereum-based private blockchain was used.
Pavan Ramchandra Padghan, Arul Daniel Samuel, Raja Pitchaimuthu
With the liberalization of the Electricity Market (EM), a secure demand response program (DRP) for real-time decisions is needed to enhance the effectiveness, stability, and security of the EM. Customers play a crucial role in DRP as they can offer flexibility when the market demands it. Nevertheless, the aggregator does not fully understand the customer’s available DR capacity to accurately bid on market transactions. To do so, the article presents a smart contract based on an optimal bidding strategy for an aggregator that considers customer receptiveness. First, we endeavor to determine the customer’s receptiveness concerning various incentives where the home energy management system (HEMS) introduces the employed load adjustment for electrical appliances. Second, the aggregator adopts a rational approach to employing the optimal day-ahead bidding strategy and scheduling for energy storage systems (ESS) to exploit economic benefits. The execution of Ethereum smart contracts in market transactions ensures transparency, security, and superior reliability. A test case with realistic data is presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed bidding strategy. The results confirm that the aggregator determines the optimal bidding value for the next day. An aggregator could generate a profit of $23 from the bidding strategy. The regional transmission system operator delivers 485 kWh of flexibility, of which consumers account for 60% and ESS for 40%, generating a profit of $40 per day. Prosumers selling electricity to the aggregator would make an average profit of $6 per day. Thus, the execution of DRP and a bidding strategy results in economic benefits for the aggregator and other entities in the EM.
Traditional power grids have been the major source of electricity for several households and industries for a number of years. However, with that kind of supply, every member of the grid is affected whenever there is a fault on the transmission line connecting them. With that in mind, microgrids, usually powered by numerous distributed electrical sources, were introduced to curb this problem, and as such, energy users have also become producers themselves. Nonetheless, the generation of power by distributed sources brings about unpredictability on the network and, in essence, problems in energy sharing. Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading has several advantages and has been introduced to mitigate energy sharing problems. With networked energy trading comes the issue of trust, as several prosumers are concerned about their privacy and security in such environments. Therefore, this work leverages the advantages of blockchain in proposing a secure energy trading platform for all parties involved. Coupled with certificateless signcryption, an immutable energy trading market is designed, and its use case is applicable in smart cities. A thorough security analysis was performed, and the efficiency of our proposed solution is backed by numerical results.
We introduce SDAG, a blockchain-enabled secure data awareness model by which energy nodes can provide visibility into energy operations without involving energy operators in the smart grids. SDAG consists of a registration protocol (RPro) for assigning a cryptographic identity to an energy node and a data-aware protocol (DAPro) for executing data awareness with the support of a shared secret session key and SDAG smart contracts, which facilitate data awareness consensus amongst energy nodes. SDAG satisfies the smart grid's data awareness security requirements, which include correctness of data, assurance of energy node identity, and fairness of data awareness transactions such as energy node registration. As a proof of concept, we apply our model to mitigate a recent issue on the loss of State Estimator (SE) due to contracting data in a real-world energy grid.
Abstract This research presents a decentralised incentive‐based demand response (DR) program using blockchain technology. Consumers self‐report baseline to the system operator (SO), the smart contract confirms the validity of the data to execute transactions and finally the validators record the information on the blockchain network. During the DR event, a set of consumers are randomly selected to deliver the required load reduction. The signalled consumer who delivers the load reduction is rewarded, and the non‐called consumers who diverge from their reported baseline are penalised. The randomness of choosing the consumers and penalty function restrict the baseline inflation. Here, we create a blockchain network and deploy a smart contract on the Ethereum build platform. A DR event scenario is adopted with residential houses data sets, all consumers report their baseline information to the SO through the Internet and smart meter. The SO calls four users to deliver the essential load reduction according to the probability of choosing a consumer. The smart contract verifies the received information to start transaction execution. We use proof of authority mechanism to select validation nodes from the participants using voting system. They validate each block before adding it to the blockchain. Last, the monetary transactions settle in participants' wallets. Our results confirm that decentralised systems like blockchain can significantly improve transparency, openness, and customer participation in the DR program. Also contributes to the security and privacy of user information with a minimal investment in new infrastructure.
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have been growing in the evolution of interaction with the physical world. CPS can control and manages applications of the physical world around us. However, most traditional CPS-based systems have been designed and developed within the centralized system, which can violate security, trust, and privacy (STP). Blockchain is a potential solution to realizing CPS. It can provide data security and privacy through block hash generation and transaction validation schemes. Blockchain applications can enhance the performance of CPS through the peer-to-peer (P2P) communication mechanism. In this paper, we have described several challenges of CPS applications (i.e., smart grids and connected vehicles) and provided blockchain-based solutions to address STP challenges. The benefits of blockchain in CPS have been discussed in this paper. We also proposed a blockchain-enabled CPS and discussed the integration process of blockchain in several components of CPSs. The proposed solutions enhance the performance of CPS concerning security, privacy, and trust management.