A Blockchain-Based Cooperative Authentication Mechanism for Smart Grid

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents a multi-domain authentication mechanism based on blockchain to maintain the security of smart devices.

The authors are invited to address the following comments:

1. The manuscript should clearly compare the proposed approach with existing studies that used blockchain for authentication for smart grid.

2. It is suggested to improve the conclusion and include the value based results in conclusion part.

3. It is suggested to include the limitation and future prospective of this study.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The authors have done good work and following queries must be addressed:

Not much literature related to previous works has not been included in the paper.

The previous studies may be presented in tabular form focussing on principle of the previous methodologies.

The research gap in present work is missing.

The introduction section must highlight the contributions of the present work in a well specified manner focussing more on specific contributions rather than writing general ones.

The novelty in the paper is missing. Authors must highlight the novelty in the introduction itself.

The simulation results must be included in abstract. At least top effectiveness should be shown in abstract itself.

The experimental setup lacks clear explanation of how experiments are carries out.

The design goals must be included in proposed methodologies section and must be removed from preliminaries.

The proposed algorithm must be written in block separating it from the main text of the article.

The results are not elaborated well. Authors must focus on the explanation of the results.

There are very few references related to the problems which forms the basis of the paper.

There are major formatting and few grammatical errors in the paper.

The conclusion must focus on present work along with mentioning the limitations of the work.

Emergence and Working of blockchain is not properly explained. The following works can be helpful. Untangling blockchain technology: A survey on state of the art, security threats, privacy services, applications and future research directions; Blockchain for smart cities: A review of architectures, integration trends and future research directions.

The conclusion must also focus on future directions of research.

 

The manuscript is well written and can be modified into a good quality article.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is very interesting and provides some nice contribution to the literature. However, I have some suggestions for the authors. Therefore, the authors are advised to consider the below and revise the paper accordingly.

1) The first line of the abstract should be re-phrased.

2) Line 2, it is mentioned that "Many smart devices have been widely used in smart grid". The authors should provide the name of few  smart devices for the guidance of the readers.

3) Line 3, it is mentioned that "However, these smart devices face various kinds of network attacks". The authors should provide the name of few  network attacks for the guidance of the readers.

4)  Line 5, "In this state" should be replaced by "In this paper".

5) Figure 5 is not cited. It should be cited within the main body of the paper.

6) The authors should briefly discuss which software is implemented for the visualization.

7) The best result from a new method and approach is necessary but often finding out the limits or weaknesses of the new method is equally significant for potential users or further improvements.

8) Future research work and directions should be discussed briefly.

9) A brief discussion section should be provided to summarize the current challenges and key findings of this paper.

10) Line 15, "energy management system which includes various" should be replaced by "energy management system that includes various".

11) Line 38, " there is a centralised certificate " should be replaced by " there is a centralized certificate ".

12) Line 44, " For example, some organisations" should be replaced by " For example, some organizations".

13) Line 46, "a decentralised, secure" should be replaced by "a decentralized, secure".

14) Line 65, "the scenario of multi-domain smart grid" should be replaced by "the scenario of a multi-domain smart grid".

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

I'm grateful to you for such important and interesting research. I support your logical chain for the construction of manuscript. The sequence of the task relevance, proposed methods, and so on is built logically, as is the presentation of the results itself. In general,

I suggest that you publish your research in this form, but I have just one question. Page 10, line 364. When you talk about "man-in-the-middle attack", how many intermediate points are possible? How does the security system react depending on the number of "man-in-the-middle attack" points?

I wish you success research in the future!

Reviewer

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

This work presents a multi-domain authentication mechanism based on blockchain cooperation to maintain the security of smart devices, including initialization method based on blockchain cooperative authentication, dynamic change method of intelligent devices and information, cross-domain authentication algorithm, and cross-domain key cooperative algorithm. Further analysis and simulation experiments are conducted to demonstrate the security and effectiveness of the proposed mechanism. The manuscript is well written and data presented is reasonable, so I think it can be published after minor revisions as below:

1.     Please elaborate the novelty of this work compared with the previously reported works.

2.     Please add more related references in the Introduction.

3.     The full spelling of an abbreviation is required when it first appears. Please check it through the papers, such as “AES and RSA” in “Related Work”.

4.     Please check the text and grammar errors carefully through the papers.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have taken into account my comments while revising the paper. My comments and concerns are fully address. Therefore, I do recommend accepting this paper.

Minor editing of English language required