LAPAA: A Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Edge Computing Built on ASCON Algorithm

Facing the challenges of next-generation network security, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) serves as a decentralized model designed to meet the growing demands for data processing and reduce latency, making its security increasingly critical. However, with the rapid development of edge computing technology, traditional authentication protocols have become inadequate due to their complexity, insufficient protection of user anonymity, and neglect of resource constraints. These issues are at the core of current network security challenges. In response, this paper innovatively proposes LAPAA—a secure and lightweight authentication protocol for Edge computing built on ASCON algorithm. LAPAA effectively addresses the problems found in previous solutions and protects user privacy through anonymity by combining the symmetric encryption algorithm ASCON with asymmetric elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). It employs clever parameter and computation strategies to maintain key consistency between edge devices and MEC servers, while avoiding the leakage of users' real identities. Furthermore, due to the lightweight nature of the ASCON algorithm itself, LAPAA provides superior low-latency performance for the protocol. Additionally, through simulation verification and informal security analysis using the Scyther tool, LAPAA demonstrates its strong defense against various malicious threats and comparative evaluations with other protocols highlight LAPAA’s significant advantages in various aspects. Collectively, this research offers a secure and streamlined authentication strategy for MEC contexts, underscoring LAPAA’s inventive and groundbreaking approach to overcoming prevalent obstacles.