MCDH-SLKAP: Modified Computational Diffie-Hellman-Based Secure and Lightweight Key Agreement Protocol for Decentralized Edge Computing Networks

Decentralized Edge Computing Networks (DECN) environments have emerged with the advent of the IoT to reduce delays, bringing data processing closer to where the data is generated to improve the processing of volumetric data at high speed instead of being sent to clouds to facilitate real-time applications. However, the security and privacy of the data exchanged among the edge devices need more consideration, considering its sensitivity and importance. Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) can be used to protect data exchange from malicious attacks. Unfortunately, CDH is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and lacks mutual authentication. Therefore, considering the computational power of devices in the DECN environment, this article presents a Modified CDH-based Secure and Lightweight Key Agreement Protocol (MCDH-SKLAP) to secure communication in the DECN. The proposed protocol has undergone a thorough analysis for robustness under ROM and ProVerif threat models, instilling confidence in its security aspects. Furthermore, the performance analysis results show it has low computation and communication overhead, making it suitable for use with resource-limited devices in the DECN environment. The proposed MCDH-SKLAP has achieved a 35% to 81% improvement in computation overhead and an 8.5% to 30% improvement in communication overhead.