Post-Quantum Secure Lattice-Based Lightweight Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for Multilayer IoT-Enabled Smart Grid System

The smart grid is a modern electricity network that incorporates sophisticated communication and control technologies to improve efficiency, reliability, and security. This study presents a secure, lightweight authentication and key agreement scheme for multi-layer Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart grid systems, targeting the essential requirement to safeguard industrial control networks against cyber threats. The proposed scheme incorporates two security mechanisms to improve authentication and communication security in smart grid systems. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) facilitate secure device authentication between smart meters and the Master Terminal Unit (MTU) by utilizing hardware-level uniqueness, thereby ensuring resilience against cloning attacks. Additionally, post-quantum lattice-based Ring Learning with Errors (RLWE) hard problem ensures secure communication between the MTU and the Remote Terminal Unit (RTU), providing quantum-resistant security and efficient key exchange. The framework’s resilience is rigorously evaluated with the ProVerif security verification tool to confirm its strength against advanced cyberattacks. A formal security analysis quantitatively assesses the cryptographic robustness of the scheme, whereas an informal security analysis examines its ability to withstand practical cyber threats, including replay attacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, and device impersonation in actual smart grid environments.