A deployable SCADA authentication technique for modern power grids

The modern power grid makes extensive use of automated data collection and control. These supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems often use communication protocols that were developed for isolated networks. However, the underlying SCADA systems often use the Internet for data transit, exposing these SCADA devices to remote, malicious adversaries. Unfortunately, these protocols are often vulnerable to impersonation attacks, and the devices can be susceptible to cryptographic key compromise. This allows adversaries to pollute the protocols with misinformation. In this paper, we propose an approach to authenticate the underlying SCADA protocols that combines a different approach to data authenticity and hardware-protected key distribution approach. Unlike prior work, our approach does not require modification to the SCADA end-points themselves, allowing the technique to be combined with legacy devices.