Smart metering de-pseudonymization

Marek Jawurek, Martin Johns, Konrad Rieck

Abstract: Consumption traces collected by Smart Meters are highly privacy sensitive data. For this reason, current best practice is to store and process such data in pseudonymized form, separating identity information from the consumption traces. However, even the consumption traces alone may provide many valuable clues to an attacker, if combined with limited external indicators. Based on this observation, we identify two attack vectors using anomaly detection and behavior pattern matching that allow effective depseudonymization. Using a practical evaluation with real-life consumption traces of 53 households, we verify the feasibility of our techniques and show that the attacks are robust against common countermeasures, such as resolution reduction or frequent re-pseudonymization.