<scp>ECAAP‐SG</scp>: Efficient certificateless anonymous authentication protocol for <scp>SG</scp>

Abstract A smart meter (SM) is an essential device within a smart grid (SG). It collects electrical power data from the customer and reports it to the service provider at regular intervals. Unfortunately, these regular reports may disclose confidential customer information without their knowledge. Moreover, SM is a device with limited resources, which means it cannot manage heavy security protocols. To mitigate these problems, an efficient certificateless anonymous authentication protocol for SG (ECAAP‐SG) protocol was designed. It cannot allow an adversary to tap into the communication channel and access exchanged information. In addition, the designed scheme fits SM's resource capacity. Furthermore, the authentication security provided by ECAAP‐SG guarantees that legal entities are communicating. Moreover, ECAAP‐SG provides key agreement security that establishes the session key. The established session key will be used to secure future communication. Besides, a random oracle model is used for the security analysis of the proposed protocol, and we prove that it is secure under the discrete logarithm problem and the computational Diffie–Hellman problem.