A Strategy for Edge Node Anonymous Verification and Protection Incorporating Reputation Center
Guowei Zhang, Jiayuan Du, Xiuhua Lu, Xiaodong Zang, Yang Yang · IEEE Internet of Things Journal · 2025
The rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) continues to serve as a critical bridge between the physical world and digital space, driving increasing demands for optimized communication capabilities and time-sensitive data acquisition. However, traditional cloud computing architectures are becoming increasingly insufficient to meet these stringent demands. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has thus emerged as a promising paradigm. By delegating data processing tasks from centralized cloud servers to edge nodes (ENs) located near end-users, MEC significantly enhances service efficiency while simultaneously introducing heightened privacy and security risks. To mitigate both external threats during task interactions and internal adversaries within the network, this paper proposes a Lightweight Verification and Protection (LVP) strategy for ENs. LVP primarily leverages secure computation techniques to ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of private information during transmission and verification. It further incorporates a reputation-based evaluation framework to mitigate the impact of insider threats. Specifically, the integrity of user-uploaded task data is first verified, followed by anonymous matching between users and ENs through paired index. A reputation-based anonymous authentication algorithm is then designed to prevent exposure or linkage of reputation information during usage. Finally, reputation values are dynamically updated by jointly considering temporal relevance and historical behavior. Theoretical analysis confirms the robustness and correctness of all LVP sub-algorithms, while experimental evaluations demonstrate the scheme’s effectiveness and feasibility under low computational and communication overhead.