PAGS: PUF-based Anonymous Group Signature for Node Authentication in Edge Computing

Abstract

With the development of 5G communication technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, edge computing faces big challenges and opportunities. In an edge computing system, edge servers deployed at the edge of the network, between the cloud server and terminal nodes, avoid long-distance data transmission. Nowadays, the quantity of terminal nodes increases rapidly due to the wide application of edge computing technology. Furthermore, the data transmitted by terminal nodes usually involves people’s private information. Therefore, a privacy-preserving group authentication scheme to ensure data security and privacy is urgent to be designed. And terminal nodes are vulnerable to be compromised and then brings the leakage of secret keys. To enhance the security of nodes, we introduce physical unclonable functions (PUFs) into the group signature scheme to realize privacy-preserving group authentication for edge computing systems in this paper. Besides, the formal security models and security proofs are provided to prove the security of the proposed scheme. Finally, experiments are done not only on the raspberry pi 4 but also on the desktop. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for terminal nodes.