SA2FE: A Secure, Anonymous, Auditable, and Fair Edge Computing Service Offloading Framework

2025-04-28

AI Summary

Task offloading in decentralized edge computing faces critical challenges including data security, privacy leakage, unfair resource allocation, and malicious attacks. Method: This paper proposes the first integrated cryptographic framework supporting both service-information protection and fair offloading. It innovatively combines rerandomizable puzzle primitives with blind token mechanisms, augmented by zero-knowledge proofs and lightweight protocols, and formally proves security within the Universal Composability (UC) framework. Contribution/Results: The scheme guarantees user anonymity, double-spending resistance, and auditable token usage, without requiring an “always-on” cloud server. Experimental evaluations on commercial end-user devices and edge nodes demonstrate low computational overhead, high throughput, and linear scalability—outperforming existing cloud-dependent approaches in both efficiency and practicality.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Learning on the Edge & Model Compression
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments

Abstract

The inclusion of pervasive computing devices in a democratized edge computing ecosystem can significantly expand the capability and coverage of near-end computing for large-scale applications. However, offloading user tasks to heterogeneous and decentralized edge devices comes with the dual risk of both endangered user data security and privacy due to the curious base station or malicious edge servers, and unfair offloading and malicious attacks targeting edge servers from other edge servers and/or users. Existing solutions to edge access control and offloading either rely on"always-on"cloud servers with reduced edge benefits or fail to protect sensitive user service information. To address these challenges, this paper presents SA2FE, a novel framework for edge access control, offloading and accounting. We design a rerandomizable puzzle primitive and a corresponding scheme to protect sensitive service information from eavesdroppers and ensure fair offloading decisions, while a blind token-based scheme safeguards user privacy, prevents double spending, and ensures usage accountability. The security of SA2FE is proved under the Universal Composability framework, and its performance and scalability are demonstrated with implementation on commodity mobile devices and edge servers.

Problem

• Ensures secure and private edge computing task offloading
• Prevents unfair offloading and malicious attacks in decentralized systems
• Protects sensitive service information without relying on cloud servers

Innovation

• Rerandomizable puzzle primitive protects service information
• Blind token scheme ensures privacy and accountability
• Universal Composability framework proves security