Hashing Based Authentication for Ultra-Low Cost Low Power SCADA Application Using MSP430 Microcontroller

Nowadays SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems became widely used technology. This fact is directly related to the ubiquity of smart systems using a wide range of technologies in control and supervision applications. MCU technology are a very promising technology in this field especially, with the emergence of safety critical MCU, cost/power reduction and wireless connectivity. Due to the ubiquitous use of such technologies, security considerations must be considered. In this paper, we propose a RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) authentication solution that is based on a lightweight hashing algorithm. Proposed solution is suitable for SCADA systems using MSP430 ultra low power low cost MCU. This work is seen as a proof of concept of using such technology with freely available tools to add reliable authentication functionality of our previously designed SCADA systems. Keywords— SCADA, MSP430, RTU, Security, hash-based authentication.