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.










Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbas N, Zhang Y, Taherkordi A, Skeie T (2017) Mobile edge computing: a survey. IEEE Internet Things J 5(1):450–465
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
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
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
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
Blanchet B (2008) A computationally sound mechanized prover for security protocols. IEEE Trans Dependable Secure Comput 5(4):193–207
Chaudhry SA (2021) An improved lightweight symmetric key based authentication scheme for iov. J Netw Intell 6(4):656–667
Chen CM, Liu S (2021) Improved secure and lightweight authentication scheme for next-generation iot infrastructure. Security and Communication Networks 2021 (6537678)
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Luo Y, Zheng W, Chen YC (2021) An anonymous authentication and key exchange protocol in smart grid. J Netw Intell 6(2):206–215
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
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
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
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
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
Tsai JL, Lo NW (2015) A privacy-aware authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. IEEE Syst J 9(3):805–815
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
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
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
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
Wu JMT, Wei M, Wu ME, Tayeb S (2021) Top-k dominating queries on incomplete large dataset. J Supercomput 78:3976–3997
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)
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
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
About this article
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
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-022-04411-9