EnThM: Energy Theft Mitigation in Smart Grids using Hierarchical Verification of Metering Data

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 24 May 2026] EnThM: Energy Theft Mitigation in Smart Grids using Hierarchical Verification of Metering Data Tapadyoti Banerjee, Pabitra Mitra, Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury The advent of digital technologies has revolutionized traditional power distribution networks, transforming them into smart grids that are more reliable, efficient, and sustainable. Despite these advancements, electricity theft remains a significant threat to the effective operation of large electrical networks. To address this issue, we propose EnThM, a lightweight and communication-efficient scheme for real-time mitigation of power theft in smart grid systems. Our approach uses the hierarchical structure of the smart grid infrastructure to verify the authenticity of the metering data at multiple levels of the power distribution network. Our work focuses primarily on issues related to cryptographic security. The verification process involves statistically modeling the cumulative averages of the power usage data and applying rule-based checks on the aggregated power consumption at each level, while accounting for seasonal and daily consumption variations. The proposed method has been tested on benchmark consumption data, yielding high accuracy, efficient implementation, and real-time applicability. Comments: 11 pages, 6 figures Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Emerging Technologies (cs.ET) Cite as: arXiv:2605.24951 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2605.24951v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.24951 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Tapadyoti Banerjee [view email] [v1] Sun, 24 May 2026 09:03:26 UTC (554 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs cs.ET References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)