ECC: Enhancing Smart Grid Communication with Ethereum Blockchain, Asymmetric Cryptography, and Cloud Services

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.