RAP-MEC: Robust Authentication Protocol for the Mobile Edge Computing Services

Abstract

The emergence of edge computing has revolutionized the landscape of modern applications, offering remarkable advantages such as low-latency and high-bandwidth abilities by decentralizing computation closer to data sources. Despite these advantages, providing secure software regarding communication between users and mobile edge computing (MEC) servers introduces a challenge owing to the sensitive nature of the transmitted data. In response, numerous authentication protocols have been proposed to maintain the reliability of software communication within the MEC environment. In this paper, we introduce RAP-MEC, a novel technique developed to enhance software quality by setting up session key for encrypted communication between users and MEC server. RAP-MEC incorporates functionalities for password change and single sign-on, enabling seamless access to MEC server services. Leveraging physical unclonable functions, symmetric encryption, elliptic curve cryptography, and hash functions, RAP-MEC aims to significantly reduce communication cost [24.85% to 72.73%] and execution time [34.66% to 76.64%]. Through rigorous security analysis, we assess RAP-MEC’s resilience against various threats, including DoS, replay, man-in-the-middle, and impersonation attacks. Our findings underscore RAP-MEC’s robustness, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of communications within the MEC environment.

Keywords

• Authentication
• security
• mobile edge computing
• session key