Thesis
Securing future Internet of things devices for power grid through trusted execution environment
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2017
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/100122
Abstract
The smart power devices, such as the solar and wind power generating devices, are increasing in number. The idea of connecting these devices to the power grid makes it very useful. It can be used as an alternate power source when the demand on the grid increases. The energy supplied to the grid by these devices can be dedicated, or can be the residual when deployed in a smart house. These devices are very critical as they are directly connected to the grid. Ensuring that the devices operate correctly is very important to the safety of the grid. Hence, these devices need to be monitored remotely by the utilities always. These devices enable to do so by using communication protocols such as Modbus. As these devices contain software, and communicate over TCP or other mediums, it makes them vulnerable to cyber-attacks. An attempt to secure these devices has been made in several ways in the past, but the security measures are prone to failing. The concept of Trusted Execution Environment allows to implement a safe and secure environment which cannot be tampered with. Any attempt to tamper with the code or the data leads to the corruption of the device, and this fail safe can prevent hackers from performing malicious tasks using them. The code and the data stored on these devices are always verified by the vendors. This allows the utilities to trust the values they receive from these devices, and can be ensured that the code running on the device is not tampered with. This thesis attempts to use the field of Trusted Execution Environment in the grid connected smart power devices, and provide the confidence of security and integrity in their operation. An implementation of Trusted Applications is provided in the context of Smart Solar Inverter Devices. These devices are secured by using Trusted Application to securely access and store data. Updating or fetching the status of the device is done using Modbus protocol, which is made secure by adding asymmetric signature to the packets with the help of the Trusted Application.
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Details
- Title
- Securing future Internet of things devices for power grid through trusted execution environment
- Creators
- Utkarsh Agrawal
- Contributors
- Adam Hahn (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900524868801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis