Authentication of GOOSE Messages under Timing Constraints in IEC 61850 Substations

For the future generation of energy systems, secure communication is a key component in ensuring a reliable and stable operation. The actual respective standard to define the communication network architectures for substation automation is the IEC 61850. In order to address the shortcomings of IEC 61850 w.r.t. communication security, IEC 62351-6 introduces respective recommendations. However, a thorough analysis of these recommendations shows that the authenticity and integrity of time-critical protocols such as Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) messages are not entirely covered by the proposed security measures. Therefore, in the present contribution, implementation of the RSASSA-PSS and HMAC-SHA256 authentication are investigated for the given context. Comparison with previous works is provided and obtained results show that the HMAC scheme has a better computational time than the recommended RSASSA-PSS. Thus, adjustment of the IEC 62351-6 considering the authentication of GOOSE messages shall be considered in the next edition of the standard.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Ghada Elbez

Hubert B. Keller

Veit Hagenmeyer

Conference

Publication date: September 2019

Publication date (Print): September 2019

Pages: 137-143

Affiliations

[0001]Institute of Automation and Applied Informatics (IAI)

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1,

76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen

Germany

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/icscsr19.17

SO-VID: 8b6cea67-1e6f-421b-9c6b-0416c194dcd1

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 6th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2019

Conference acronym: ICS-CSR

Conference number: 6

Conference location: Athens, Greece

Conference date: 10th-12th September 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Cyber Security Research

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/icscsr19.17

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

E. Andrew YoungT. Hudson OpenSSL library 1998 URL https://www.openssl.org/
E. BarkerQ. Dang NIST Special Publication 800-57, Part 3: Application-Specific Key Management Guidance 2015
M. BellareP. Rogaway The exact security of digital signatures-how to sign with rsa and rabin International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques 399 416 Springer 1996
J. Böck RSA-PSS–Provable secure RSA Signatures and their Implementation Jan 31 2019 2011
G. ElbezH. B. KellerV. Hagenmeyer A Cost-efficient Software Testbed for Cyber-Physical Security in IEC 61850-based Substations 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm) 1 6 Oct 2018 [10.1109/SmartGridComm.2018.8587456]
F. FangD.-h. WANGX.-h. XUANJ.-h. XIEC. Qing Application research of hmac in intelligent substation communication security DEStech Transactions on Engineering and Technology Research 2018
S. M. FarooqS. S. HussainT. S. Ustun Performance evaluation and analysis of IEC 62351-6 probabilistic signature scheme for securing GOOSE messages IEEE Access 7 32343 32351 2019
F. HohlbaumM. BraendleF. Alvarez Cyber Security Practical considerations for implementing IEC 62351 PAC World Conference 2010
J. HoyosM. DehusT. X. Brown Exploiting the GOOSE protocol: A practical attack on cyber-infrastructure Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2012 IEEE 1508 1513 IEEE 2012
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC 61850: Power Utility Automation (TC57) 2007
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC 62351: Power systems management and associated information exchange - data and communications security - part 6: Security for IEC 62351 2010
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC 61850: Communication networks and systems for power utility automation in substation - part 8.1 2011
D. IshchenkoR. Nuqui Secure communication of intelligent electronic devices in digital substations 2018 IEEE/PES Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exposition (T&D) 1 5 IEEE 2018
H. KrawczykM. BellareR. Canetti HMAC: Keyed-hashing for message authentication 1997
N. KushE. AhmedM. BranaganE. Foo Poisoned GOOSE: exploiting the GOOSE protocol Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Information Security Conference-Volume 149 17 22 Australian Computer Society, Inc 2014
R. L. RivestA. ShamirL. Adleman A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems Communications of the ACM 21 2 120 126 1978

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] E. Andrew YoungT. Hudson OpenSSL library 1998 URL https://www.openssl.org/

[2] E. BarkerQ. Dang NIST Special Publication 800-57, Part 3: Application-Specific Key Management Guidance 2015

[3] M. BellareP. Rogaway The exact security of digital signatures-how to sign with rsa and rabin International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques 399 416 Springer 1996

[4] J. Böck RSA-PSS–Provable secure RSA Signatures and their Implementation Jan 31 2019 2011

[5] G. ElbezH. B. KellerV. Hagenmeyer A Cost-efficient Software Testbed for Cyber-Physical Security in IEC 61850-based Substations 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm) 1 6 Oct 2018 [10.1109/SmartGridComm.2018.8587456]

[6] F. FangD.-h. WANGX.-h. XUANJ.-h. XIEC. Qing Application research of hmac in intelligent substation communication security DEStech Transactions on Engineering and Technology Research 2018

[7] S. M. FarooqS. S. HussainT. S. Ustun Performance evaluation and analysis of IEC 62351-6 probabilistic signature scheme for securing GOOSE messages IEEE Access 7 32343 32351 2019

[8] F. HohlbaumM. BraendleF. Alvarez Cyber Security Practical considerations for implementing IEC 62351 PAC World Conference 2010

[9] J. HoyosM. DehusT. X. Brown Exploiting the GOOSE protocol: A practical attack on cyber-infrastructure Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2012 IEEE 1508 1513 IEEE 2012

[10] International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC 61850: Power Utility Automation (TC57) 2007

[11] International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC 62351: Power systems management and associated information exchange - data and communications security - part 6: Security for IEC 62351 2010

[12] International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC 61850: Communication networks and systems for power utility automation in substation - part 8.1 2011

[13] D. IshchenkoR. Nuqui Secure communication of intelligent electronic devices in digital substations 2018 IEEE/PES Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exposition (T&D) 1 5 IEEE 2018

[14] H. KrawczykM. BellareR. Canetti HMAC: Keyed-hashing for message authentication 1997

[15] N. KushE. AhmedM. BranaganE. Foo Poisoned GOOSE: exploiting the GOOSE protocol Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Information Security Conference-Volume 149 17 22 Australian Computer Society, Inc 2014

[16] R. L. RivestA. ShamirL. Adleman A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems Communications of the ACM 21 2 120 126 1978

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