A Lightweight Group Authentication Protocol for Blockchain-Based Vehicular Edge Computing Networks

The trust management and the identity authentication in the Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is the critical part of data security. However, most of the existing authentication schemes fail to fully address the data trust issue among edge computing nodes in cross-regional communications, and lack anonymous security features. In this paper, a lightweight Multi-entity Authenticated Group Key Agreement (MAGKA) protocol is proposed for blockchain-based VEC networks. The proposed blockchain network built from the roadside units is to ensure the un-deniability of any data exchanged among the edge networks to provide data trust management. The MAGKA protocol substantiates the lightweight authentication between the vehicles, the roadside unit, and the trusted authority anonymously, allowing the vehicles to join or leave the edge network dynamically on the premise of ensured security. The security analysis shows that MAGKA protocol can resist common attacks effectively. In addition, the performance evaluation shows that the MAGKA reduces the computational cost for the low-power node and powerful node by 75% and 50%, respectively, over the existing authentication protocols.