CI-HDA: Heterogeneous Deniable Authentication Based on CLC and IBC for Location Privacy in Edge Computing

Edge computing improves the performance of Internet of Things (IoT) devices by moving cloud services closer to where these devices operate, thereby reducing delays and saving bandwidth. However, the IoT devices communicate wirelessly with edge servers, which creates a significant challenge in keeping the devices' locations private, especially when they use different methods. To address this, researchers have proposed various methods. However, these methods require a lot of computational power and storage, which makes them unsuitable for edge computing environments. To address these challenges, we propose a certificateless cryptography (CLC) and identity-based cryptography (IBC) based heterogeneous deniable authentication (CI-HDA) scheme. It enables an IoT device operating CLC to securely communicate with an edge server using IBC. The server verifies the devices authenticity without proving its participation to third parties, which ensures location privacy in edge computing environments. Additionally, our scheme supports batch verification, which enables the server to efficiently validate multiple authenticators simultaneously. The security of CI-HDA scheme is formally proven in the random oracle model, and performance evaluations demonstrate reduced computational and communication/storage overheads compared to existing methods. We also explored its application in military surveillance, which highlights its practicality in privacy-sensitive edge computing environments.