A Distributed and Decentralized Certificateless Framework for Reliable Shared Data Auditing for FOG-CPS Networks

FOG computing enhances communication efficiency by processing data at the network’s edge. In many critical infrastructure (CI) networks, user entities outsource data to the FOG server, but the reliability of the data is a concern. To avoid incorrect decision-making due to corrupt data, a data auditing process is mandatory. Further, a group of user entities in a CI network generate data onto a common file and outsource the file to the FOG server. Auditing such shared group data creates additional complexities. Existing shared group data auditing schemes using public key infrastructure (PKI) or identity-based cryptography (IBC) face challenges such as certificate management or key escrow problems respectively. While, certificateless cryptography (CLC) offers better security and efficiency, but many CLC-based shared group data auditing schemes lack protection against key generation center compromise. The key generation process in many of the existing shared group data auditing schemes is centralized and does not support flexible user entity admission. This paper proposes a distributed and decentralized cryptography approach to enhance the security of key generation for group members. The scheme offers flexible user admission, allowing for full or semi-membership. The proposed scheme provides efficient and secure shared group data auditing against public key replacement, metadata forgery, and integrity attacks, as shown by performance evaluation and security analysis.