Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A provably secure lightweight authentication protocol in mobile edge computing environments

  • Published:
The Journal of Supercomputing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Mobile edge computing can meet the needs of users in real time by pushing cloud resources, such as computing, network, and storage, to the edge of a mobile network. Although mobile edge technology has brought many conveniences to mobile services, many security problems, such as mutual authentication between mobile users and servers, and the impersonation of mobile users or servers, have not been properly solved. In this paper, we propose a lightweight and secure authentication protocol to solve such security problems. We conducted a formal security analysis of our protocol using ProVerif and the Real-or-Random model to prove its correctness and security, and even if the registration center is attacked, our protocol is still secure. At the end of this paper, by comparing the communication and computing costs with other existing protocols, we prove the security and efficiency of our protocol.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Abbas N, Zhang Y, Taherkordi A, Skeie T (2017) Mobile edge computing: a survey. IEEE Internet Things J 5(1):450–465

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Ahmad I, Shahabuddin S, Kumar T, Okwuibe J, Gurtov A, Ylianttila M (2019) Security for 5g and beyond. IEEE Commun Surv Tutor 21(4):3682–3722

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Ali Z, Hussain S, Rehman RHU, Munshi A, Liaqat M, Kumar N, Chaudhry SA (2020) Itssaka-ms: an improved three-factor symmetric-key based secure aka scheme for multi-server environments. IEEE Access 8:107993–108003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Alrawais A, Alhothaily A, Hu C, Cheng X (2017) Fog computing for the internet of things: security and privacy issues. IEEE Internet Comput 21(2):34–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Amin R, Kumar N, Biswas G, Iqbal R, Chang V (2018) A light weight authentication protocol for iot-enabled devices in distributed cloud computing environment. Fut Generat Comput Syst 78:1005–1019

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Blanchet B (2008) A computationally sound mechanized prover for security protocols. IEEE Trans Dependable Secure Comput 5(4):193–207

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chaudhry SA (2021) An improved lightweight symmetric key based authentication scheme for iov. J Netw Intell 6(4):656–667

    Google Scholar 

  8. Chen CM, Liu S (2021) Improved secure and lightweight authentication scheme for next-generation iot infrastructure. Security and Communication Networks 2021 (6537678)

  9. Chen CM, Li Z, Chaudhry SA, Li L (2021) Attacks and solutions for a two-factor authentication protocol for wireless body area networks. Security and Communication Networks 2021 (3116593)

  10. He D, Chan S, Guizani M (2018) Security in the internet of things supported by mobile edge computing. IEEE Commun Mag 56(8):56–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Irshad A, Sher M, Ahmad HF, Alzahrani BA, Chaudhry SA, Kumar R (2016) An improved multi-server authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. KSII Trans Internet Inf Syst (TIIS) 10(12):5529–5552

    Google Scholar 

  12. Jia X, He D, Kumar N, Choo KKR (2019) A provably secure and efficient identity-based anonymous authentication scheme for mobile edge computing. IEEE Syst J 14(1):560–571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Jiang Q, Ma J, Wei F (2016) On the security of a privacy-aware authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. IEEE Syst J 12(2):2039–2042

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kaur K, Garg S, Kaddoum G, Guizani M, Jayakody DNK (2019) A lightweight and privacy-preserving authentication protocol for mobile edge computing. In: 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), IEEE, 20517851, pp 1–6

  15. Khan S, Parkinson S, Qin Y (2017) Fog computing security: a review of current applications and security solutions. J Cloud Comput 6(1):1–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Li J, Zhang W, Dabra V, Choo KKR, Kumari S, Hogrefe D (2019) Aep-ppa: an anonymous, efficient and provably-secure privacy-preserving authentication protocol for mobile services in smart cities. J Netw Comput Appl 134:52–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Li Y, Cheng Q, Liu X, Li X (2020) A secure anonymous identity-based scheme in new authentication architecture for mobile edge computing. IEEE Syst J 15(1):935–946

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lin J, Yu W, Zhang N, Yang X, Zhang H, Zhao W (2017) A survey on internet of things: architecture, enabling technologies, security and privacy, and applications. IEEE Internet Things J 4(5):1125–1142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Luo Y, Zheng W, Chen YC (2021) An anonymous authentication and key exchange protocol in smart grid. J Netw Intell 6(2):206–215

    Google Scholar 

  20. Mollah MB, Azad MAK, Vasilakos A (2017) Security and privacy challenges in mobile cloud computing: survey and way ahead. J Netw Comput Appl 84:38–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Odelu V, Das AK, Goswami A (2015) A secure biometrics-based multi-server authentication protocol using smart cards. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Secur 10(9):1953–1966

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Roman R, Lopez J, Mambo M (2018) Mobile edge computing, fog et al.: a survey and analysis of security threats and challenges. Fut Generat Comput Syst 78:680–698

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Shirazi SN, Gouglidis A, Farshad A, Hutchison D (2017) The extended cloud: review and analysis of mobile edge computing and fog from a security and resilience perspective. IEEE J Select Areas Commun 35(11):2586–2595

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Tanveer M, Zahid AH, Ahmad M, Baz A, Alhakami H (2020) Lake-iod: lightweight authenticated key exchange protocol for the internet of drone environment. IEEE Access 8:155645–155659

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Tsai JL, Lo NW (2015) A privacy-aware authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. IEEE Syst J 9(3):805–815

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Umar M, Islam SH, Mahmood K, Ahmad S, Ghaffar Z, Saleem MA (2021) Provable secure identity-based anonymous and privacy-preserving inter-vehicular authentication protocol for vanets using puf. IEEE Trans Veh Technol. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2021.3118892

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Wang CH, Hsu KC (2019) Enhancing biometric and mutual verification in multi-server three-factor user remote authentication scheme with elliptic curve cryptography. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communications and Broadband Networking, pp 46–52, doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3330180.3330188

  28. Wang D, Cheng H, Wang P, Huang X, Jian G (2017) Zipf’s law in passwords. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Secur 12(11):2776–2791

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wu JMT, Teng Q, Srivastava G, Pirouz M, Lin JCW (2021) The efficient mining of skyline patterns from a volunteer computing network. ACM Trans Internet Technol (TOIT) 21(4):1–20

    Google Scholar 

  30. Wu JMT, Wei M, Wu ME, Tayeb S (2021) Top-k dominating queries on incomplete large dataset. J Supercomput 78:3976–3997

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Wu TY, Wang T, Lee YQ, Zheng W, Kumari S, Kumar S (2021) Improved authenticated key agreement scheme for fog-driven iot healthcare system. Security and Communication Networks 2021 (6658041)

  32. Wu TY, Yang L, Lee Z, Chu SC, Kumari S, Kumar S (2021) A provably secure three-factor authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 2021 (5537018)

  33. Xiong H, Chen J, Mei Q, Zhao Y (2020) Conditional privacy-preserving authentication protocol with dynamic membership updating for vanets. IEEE Trans Dependable Secure Comput. https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2020.3047872

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Xiong H, Zhao Y, Hou Y, Huang X, Jin C, Wang L, Kumari S (2020) Heterogeneous signcryption with equality test for iiot environment. IEEE Internet Things J. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2020.3008955

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Xiong L, Peng D, Peng T, Liang H (2017) An enhanced privacy-aware authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. KSII Trans Internet Inf Syst (TIIS) 11(12):6169–6187

    Google Scholar 

  36. Xue X, Zhang J (2021) Matching large-scale biomedical ontologies with central concept based partitioning algorithm and adaptive compact evolutionary algorithm. Appl Soft Comput 106:107343

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Yu S, Park Y (2020) Comments on itssaka-ms: an improved three-factor symmetric-key based secure aka scheme for multi-server environments. IEEE Access 8:193375–193379

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Yu S, Jho N, Park Y (2021) Lightweight three-factor-based privacy-preserving authentication scheme for iot-enabled smart homes. IEEE Access 9:126186–126197

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Zhou L, Li X, Yeh KH, Su C, Chiu W (2019) Lightweight iot-based authentication scheme in cloud computing circumstance. Fut Generat Comput Syst 91:244–251

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China

    Tsu-Yang Wu, Qian Meng, Lei Yang & Xinglan Guo

  2. Department of Mathematics, Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, 250004, India

    Saru Kumari

Authors
  1. Tsu-Yang Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Qian Meng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Lei Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Xinglan Guo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Saru Kumari
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tsu-Yang Wu.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wu, TY., Meng, Q., Yang, L. et al. A provably secure lightweight authentication protocol in mobile edge computing environments. J Supercomput 78, 13893–13914 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-022-04411-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-022-04411-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation