Sarah Tahir Bokhari, Tehreem Aftab, Ibrahim Nadir, Taimur Bakhshi
Current resource consumption monitoring systems such as utility meters allow for easy manipulation to give incorrect readings and generate corrupt bills leading to huge financial losses for utility companies. In order to limit this practice, the present work proposes the use of smart meters in tandem with an Ethereum-based blockchain to secure utility (consumption) data. Electricity generation and smart metering is taken as case-study and the proposed design is benchmarked in terms of time complexity, consensus algorithms, and security to ascertain optimal blockchain parameters for practical deployments. Given the relatively nascent and un-tested existing blockchain communication protocols, a custom TCP-based protocol is also developed to address additional re-validation requirements of the metering data exchanged between the blockchain nodes. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the proposed approach highlights a significant reduction in any human interference and errors that may lead to misappropriations in consumer metering and adds a greater degree of robustness to the billing process for the benefit of utility companies.
Abdullah Bin Masood, Marios Lestas, Hassaan Khaliq Qureshi, Nicolas Christofides · 6 authors
Closed-loop Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are significant constituent elements for smart city applications. However, security and resiliency of closed-loop CPSs can be compromised due to the centralized control structure, network interdependency and power/computational constraints. In this paper, towards addressing this problem, we propose a blockchain based de-centralized closed-loop CPS framework. Sensed measurements are stored on the blockchain and controller implementation and actuation is realized using smart contracts. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated via its simulative implementation on a distributed frequency control system within an islanded microgrid. A co-simulation framework is developed that incorporates a microgrid simulated in Matlab interfaced with Ethereum blockchain. Actuated signals from smart contracts embedded with a distributed frequency control algorithm dictate the microgrid's operating frequency to its nominal value. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through the convergence of the time-dependent signals to their expected nominal values. In addition, the feedback delays involved in transacting the sensed data and generating the actuation signals are characterized and found to be of the order of a few seconds, which is acceptable for the purpose of secondary frequency control and does not lead to instability. The effect of the block size and the crypto puzzle difficulty level on the delays is also investigated and while the difficulty does not affect the delay significantly, the increase in block size can lead to excessive delay values.
Kudrat Kaur, Adam Hahn, Sri Nikhil Gupta Gourisetti, Michael Mylrea · 5 authors
The power grid is becoming increasingly interconnected, as information from grid operations must be accessible to an array of engineers, grid regulators, and market operators. However, there remain challenges ensuring the appropriate integrity and authenticity of the grid information. While traditional cryptographic protocols, like public key infrastructure, provide security for in-transit communication, they come with key exchanges and cost to get public key certificates from a centralized authority. To address these challenges, this paper demonstrates how a hash calendar-based blockchain can be used to provide improved security for communication with the use of distributed ledgers. It demonstrates the security requirements and threats to this communication, and then provides a theoretic definition of the process. Furthermore, it introduces a use-case of the proposed process within the WSU Smart City Testbed DMS where the historian data is hashed and signed using hash calendars.
J.R. James, Daniel Hawthorne, Katherine Duncan, Aaron St. Leger · 6 authors
Power grids around the world have experienced a growing number of malicious cyber attacks. This paper provides an overview of recent use of the Hyperledger Fabric distributed operating system to prototype use of a permissioned blockchain consensus algorithm to trust shared state estimation and control data and another effort to alter local sensor data to destroy the integrity of the shared data. The paper also provides justification for an experiment to prototype use of Babble, a peer-to-peer network plugin using the hashgraph consensus algorithm, to share the state estimation and control data through transactions recorded in a hashgraph. A key claim of the hashgraph documentation, which is unsubstantiated without a proper academic analysis, is that the algorithm is asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (ABFT). Also, while the Hyperledger Fabric implementation supports thousands of transactions per second, the hashgraph algorithm documentation claims orders of magnitude more. Our experiment seeks to measure the hashgraph transaction speed and determine its suitability for improving the resilience of wide area control of the smart grid. The previous resilience research of the Anomaly Detection of Cyber Physical Systems (ADCPS) team includes research into inadvertent cyber and physical failures as well as malicious attacks. We conclude with some speculations concerning the potential impact of fast, fair, and secure sharing of data across a network of blockchains potentially interfaced using hashgraph distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Γεώργιος Σπαθούλας, Nikos Giachoudis, Georgios-Paraskevas Damiris, Georgios Theodoridis
Internet of Things is one of the most significant latest developments in computer science. It is common for modern computing infrastructures to partially consist of numerous low power devices that are characterized by high diversity in both hardware and software. Existing security models, approaches and solutions are not able to sufficiently protect such systems. In this paper we propose the use of lightweight agents installed at multiple internet of things (IoT) installations (e.g., smart-homes), in order to collaboratively detect distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks conducted by the use of IoT devices botnets. Specifically, agents exchange outbound traffic information in order to identify possible victims of DDoS attacks. This information exchange is governed by a blockchain smart contract, that ensures the integrity of both the procedure and the information. A simulation of the operation of the proposed methodology has been conducted in order to evaluate both its detection efficiency and its resilience against malicious agents that aim to falsify results.
Nikhil Ravi, Shammya Shananda Saha, Anna Scaglione, Nathan G. Johnson
In recent years, many Blockchain based frameworks for transacting commodities on a congestible network have been proposed. In particular, as the number of controllable grid connected assets increases, there is a need for a decentralized, coupled economic and control mechanism to dynamically balance the entire electric grid. Blockchain based Transactive Energy (TE) systems have gained significant momentum as an approach to sustain the reliability and security of the power grid in order to support the flexibility of electricity demand. What is lacking in these designs, however, is a mechanism that physically verifies all the energy transactions, to keep the various inherently selfish players honest. In this paper, we introduce a secure peer-to-peer network mechanism for the physical validation of economic transactions cleared over a distributed ledger. The framework is $\textit{secure}$ in the sense that selfish and malicious agents that are trying to inject false data into the network are prevented from adversely affecting the optimal functionality of the verification process by detecting and isolating them from the communication network. Preliminary simulations focusing on TE show the workings of this framework.
The out-of-gas error occurs when smart contract programs are provided with inputs that cause excessive gas consumption, and would be easily exploited to make the DoS attack. Multiple approaches have been proposed to estimate the gas limit of a function in smart contracts to avoid such error. However, under estimation often happens when the contract is complicated. In this work, we propose V-Gas, which could automatically generate inputs that maximizes the gas cost and reduce the under estimation cases. V-Gas is designed based on feedback-directed mutational fuzz testing. First, V-Gas builds the gas weighted control flow graph (CFG) of functions in smart contracts. Then, V-Gas develops gas consumption guided selection and mutation strategies to generate the input that maximize the gas consumption. For evaluation, we implement V-Gas based on js-evm, a widely used ethereum virtual machine written in javascript, and conduct experiments on 736 real-world transactions recorded on Ethereum. 44.02\% of the transactions would have out-of-gas errors under the estimation results given by solc, means that the recorded real gas consumption for those recorded transactions is larger than the gas limit value estimated by solc. While V-Gas could reduce the under estimation ratio to 13.86\%. Furthermore, V-Gas has exposed 25 previously unknown out-of-gas vulnerabilities in those widely-used smart contracts, 5 of which have been assigned unique CVE identifiers in the US National Vulnerability Database.
Out-of-gas errors occur when smart contract programs are provided with inputs that cause excessive gas consumption and which will be easily exploited to perform Denial-of-Service attacks. Various approaches have been proposed to estimate the gas limit of a function in smart contracts to avoid such error. However, underestimation often occurs when the contract is complex In this work, we propose V-Gas, which automatically generates inputs that maximize the gas cost and reduce underestimation. V-Gas is designed based on static analysis and feedback-directed mutational fuzz testing. First, V-Gas builds the gas weighted control flow graph of functions in smart contracts. Then, V-Gas develops gas consumption guided selection and mutation strategies to generate the input that maximize the gas consumption. For evaluation, we implement V-Gas based on js-evm, a widely used Ethereum virtual machine written in Javascript, and conduct experiments on 736 real-world transactions recorded on Ethereum. A total of 44.02% of the transactions would have out-of-gas errors based on the estimation results given by solc, meaning that the recorded real gas consumption for those transactions is larger than the gas limit estimated by solc. In comparison, V-Gas could reduce the underestimation ratio to 13.86%. To evaluate the performance of feedback-directed engine in V-Gas, we implemented other directed fuzzing engines and compared their performance with that of V-Gas. The results showed that V-Gas generates the same or higher gas estimation value on 97.8% of the transactions with less time, usually within 5 minutes. Furthermore, V-Gas has exposed 25 previously unknown out-of-gas vulnerabilities in widely used smart contracts, 6 of which have been assigned unique CVE identifiers in the U.S. National Vulnerability Database.
Modernization of distribution power systems is accompanied with 1) higher integration of wind turbine distributed generation (WTDG) and photovoltaic DG (PVDG) units as rooftop DGs or small power plants operated by private owners in de-regulated markets, 2) massive utilization of electric vehicles (EVs) in smart cities, and 3) extensive demand response (DR) services offered by smart homes. This paper proposes a systematic framework for modern distribution networks operation where DG aggregators (DGAGs), EV aggregators (EVAGs), and demand response aggregators (DRAGs) are motivated to contribute to real-time congestion prevention via greater local generation, flexible platform for charging schedule, and non-firm load curtailment, respectively. Moreover, a realistic mechanism is developed for microgrid operators (MGOs) to 1) relieve the system operator (SO) from the pressure of centralized congestion management and 2) optimally utilize the assets of each microgrid to prevent congestions in a decentralized manner. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated on an unbalanced distribution system containing 4 microgrids, 250 EVs, 31 WTDGs, 54 PVDGs, and 140 smart homes with DR contract.
Yeray Mezquita, Amin Shokri Gazafroudi, Juan M. Corchado, Miadreza Shafie‐khah · 6 authors
The security of smart grids is put at risk due to their automation and remote access features. Blockchain technology can be used as a distributed ledger where data is stored and all the data transactions between the different entities of a smart grid are signed to protect them from such attacks. This paper proposes a multi-agent system (MAS) that combines smart contracts and blockchain to enable Peer-to-Peer electricity trading in a MicroGrid (MG) scenario, without the need for human intervention. The use of blockchain technology helps reduce transaction costs and allows to make micro transactions in the proposed market. Blockchain also improves the security of the platform because all the involved actors can be certain about the authorship of the information produced in the system. Finally, the use of a MAS and the possibility of negotiating between the agents helps obtain an optimal state in the system in which the costs of energy are minimal and the local production of energy is profitable.
To overcome the high cost, high risk and poor efficiency of traditional centralized electric energy trading method, this paper proposes an efficient trading mechanism for energy power supply and demand network (EPSDN) based on blockchain smart contract, considering the opening of the sales side market in China. Specifically, the encourage-real-quotation (ERQ) rule was adopted to determine the clearing queue and price, thus smoothing the supply and demand interaction between the EPSDN node. Meanwhile, the blockchain smart contract was introduced into the transaction to form a sealed quotation function, which eliminates the centralization and high cost and solves the poor transparency and trust in traditional transaction. In addition, the transaction efficiency was improved through the construction of an efficient power trading system and a secure trading environment. A case study is given in the end of the paper. Case study shows that the blockchain-based smart contract trading system for the EPSDN can achieve desirable security and effectiveness, and effectively solve the problems of the traditional centralized trading method. The research findings lay solid theoretical and decision-making bases for small-scale transactions in the electric energy market.
This chapter focuses on four blockchain-based Command-and-Control (C&C) mechanisms: ZombieCoin, Floating C&C Server, ChainChannels, and Unblockable Chains. It presents their system architectures and aims to evaluate the extraordinary features of these C&C mechanisms. Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed ledger technique. It contains a chain of inter-connected blocks that record a ledger of transactions. The ingenious creation of Bitcoin block structure makes itself an immutable and decentralized digital cryptocurrency, thus attracting developers to use Bitcoin as a tool for transforming current financial system. In Bitcoin transactions, a cryptocurrency holder needs to use private key to digitally sign transactions data and public key of Bitcoin receiver. ChainChannels proves that some infrastructures of blockchain such as digital signatures can also be used as C&C channels of botnets. For the past decade, attackers have been trying to build up a highly resistant and resilient botnet C&C infrastructures.
The smart meters become an important node for managing information about electric power system so, smart-meter drags cyber security attention in this regard. In this paper, the protocol for smart meters named as “privacy preserving billing” is used which provides authentication, non-repudiation and integrity by digital signature scheme and zero-knowledge proof. This protocol ensures secrecy and reliability of end to end communication. However, vulnerability lies in integrated circuits of smart meters that can leak sensitive information and side channel attacks (SCA), derive this information from integrated circuits(IC) while it's operating. The most well-known SCA's against smart-meters are electromagnetic radiations, timing and power analysis attacks. Due to side channel attacks integrated circuit’s physical and electrical effects broadcast information related to secret key and have emerged as a major vulnerability to security applications. SCA does not temper IC security as their non-invasiveness observes device under normal conditions. Hence, our ultimate goal is to make circuit of smart-meter immune against side channel attacks, specifically differential power analysis (DPA) attack is main focus, as it is more aggressive than other SCA’s. For this reason, we present basis for SCA resistance and concept of CMOS library. Secondly, the other concept, we introduces is CMOS-based digital isolation that provides immunity to electrical noise and external fields compared to optocouplers for smart-meters.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Jeong Hoon Jo, Shailendra Rathore, Vincenzo Loia, Jong Hyuk Park
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a trusted security zone architecture that uses a blockchain technology to provide secure sharing of data in the security zone while maintaining the integrity, confidentiality and availability of data. The blockchain uses a distributed network to ensure data availability and uses public ledgers to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data. Design/methodology/approach The proposed architecture uses a blockchain technology to provide secure sharing of data in the security zone while maintaining the integrity, confidentiality and availability of data. The blockchain uses a distributed network to ensure data availability and uses public ledgers to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data. Findings Analysis of the proposed architecture with a use case scenario demonstrates that it provides a robust security measure against unauthorized network intrusions. Originality/value Unlike the existing security zone, this paper adopts a method of storing data by using blockchain. It meets the need to study integrated authentication management methods of future research.
Erica Svetec, Lucija Nađ, Robert Pašičko, Boris Pavlin
Citizens and stakeholders are increasingly associating in so-called renewable energy communities and are participating in the energy transition by investing in, producing, selling and distributing renewable energy. Such communities usually use photovoltaic systems on the rooftops of public and private buildings that are connected to a microgrid. Those energy system models represent an electrical network that is decentralized in which energy consumers also become producers (prosumers) and management of the grid is done by users. Optimization and trading of surplus energy produced in microgrids could be done via blockchain technology. On one hand, those innovations could offer a solution for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and on the other hand include economic development, creation of new jobs, cheaper energy, and energy security. The present paper gives an overview of existing technology and its usage on cases in the world but is focusing on implementation in the EU and Croatian markets.
Gabriel Tudor, Andrei Cornel-Cristian, Madalina Arhip-Calin, Alexandru Zamfirescu
The introduction of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) have caused a series of challenges from an engineering perspective mostly due to their unpredictable nature. In order to consolidate, improve production of energy, transmission and distribution, the traditional power system has evolved from a monolithic architecture to a decentralized architecture. It's not uncommon for Decentralized Control Systems also known as Distributed Control Systems (DCS) to process data locally close to the area where it's generated using edge computing. This paper aims to study Blockchain technology, the advantages and disadvantages of implementing a decentralized solution using Blockchain in an increasingly evolving Cloud and IOT markets.
George Suciu, Mari-Anais Sachian, Marius Dobrea, Cristiana-Ioana Istrate · 7 authors
This paper presents how a Smart Grid system is secured and how blockchain implementation provides confidentiality and integrity for such a system. One main issue that has to be addressed in smart grid systems is databases security. Blockchain has been proven to be a safe alternative to be used in mining systems because it allows a secure applicability in databases. Another important feature is that each hash in a crypto mining system cannot be changed if it has such an algorithm behind its build, thus resulting in a secure and reliable system. This paper aims to show how blockchain can affect and be used in a smart power management system going forth from the SealedGRID platform. This system enables the user to monitor in real time the power usage in a smart grid system, therefore, this platform being built with security and resilience against attacks in mind.
Smart Grid provides the manufacturer and consumer with real-time energy information, enabling them to make "smart" choices. Smart homes, on the other hand, realize the interaction between the end-user and the smart grid. With this infrastructure, new possibilities arise for the consumer: different prices for different types of energy, instant metering and costs, predictions about bill evolution, etc. In this paper, we focus on another important aspect, namely the quality of the electric energy received by a smart home from the smart grid. For this, we developed a power quality analyzer that besides the usually metering functions also records the period of time when the quality of the energy is lower than the threshold specified in the contract between the consumer and the provider. This information is accessible for both entities to improve the quality of the system and repay the consumer for poor quality energy.
Recently, special attention has been brought to blockchain-based platforms for the development of decentralized Smart Grid applications. The scope of this paper is first to review the state-of-the-art assessing the effectiveness of applying blockchain as a vehicle for the decentralization of the energy market and afterwards, to design a simplified decentralized transactive application and investigate its applicability through simulations, focusing on the Ethereum blockchain protocol. The results support the applicability of blockchain in automating electricity supply contracting under the concept of decentralized markets.
Development of intelligent systems in particular Water Distribution Systems (WDS) increases the demand of implementing a secure scheme that can preserve user's identification and data consumption through maintaining confidentiality, authentication and integrity. Decentralization topology has investigated a lot recently in the literature with the development of bitcoins and Ethereum networks in different IoT disciplines such as power systems and healthcare systems. In this paper, feasibility and uses cases studies on the integration WDS with Blockchain Technology are discussed. Moreover, the customer's data and identity anonymity techniques that can be integrated with the network are discussed. Furthermore, a data aggregation mechanism of the smart meters in Water Distribution System (WDS) based on distributed ledger and Blockchain technologies is proposed. Further, the customer's identity using bloom filter is simulated and optimal parameters of the bloom filter are suggested.
The smart contract on the blockchain allows credible transactions without a third party. These transactions are traceable and irreversible. The deployment and implementation of smart contracts in Ethernet will consume some gas, which will directly affect the cost of smart contracts. In order to reduce the consumption of gas during the execution of smart contracts, this article proposes an optimization algorithm for generating business process smart contracts. First, business process modeling notation (BPMN) models are extended to Petri nets. Second, Petri nets are simplified to find nodes in BPMN models that can be considered fusion tasks. Using new mapping rules from the BPMN model to solidity language, BPMN model is generated into Ethereum Smart contract model. In the BPMN models with multilayer fusion task, experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can save 15% gas on average for business processes with multiple fusion tasks.
Meryam Essaid, Daeyong Kim, Soo Hoon Maeng, Sejin Park · 5 authors
Recently Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) are becoming more and more sophisticated, which makes the existing defence systems not capable of tolerating by themselves against wide-ranging attacks. Thus, collaborative protection mitigation has become a needed alternative to extend defence mechanisms. However, the existing coordinated DDoS mitigation approaches either they require a complex configuration or are highly-priced. Blockchain technology offers a solution that reduces the complexity of signalling DDoS system, as well as a platform where many autonomous systems (Ass) can share hardware resources and defence capabilities for an effective DDoS defence. In this work, we also used a Deep learning DDoS detection system; we identify individual DDoS attack class and also define whether the incoming traffic is legitimate or attack. By classifying the attack traffic flow separately, our proposed mitigation technique could deny only the specific traffic causing the attack, instead of blocking all the traffic coming towards the victim(s).