Efficient and Provably Secure Multireceiver Signcryption Scheme for Multicast Communication in Edge Computing

Abstract

With the popularity of edge computing, edge nodes are connected with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices to process and analyze IoT-created data, and feedback corresponding results to users, devices, or data centers. In the edge computing environment, multicast is a typical communication pattern to support data transmitting between edges and devices. It allows the sender to send messages to multiple receivers in one broadcast message. To construct a secure multicast channel, the primary issue is to ensure the privacy and credibility of the transmitted message in the open wireless communication. Then, another essential issue for multicast channels is receiver anonymity, i.e., only the sender knows the receivers' identities. Also, efficiency and provable security are critical in scheme design. In this article, we design a certificateless multimessage and multireceiver signcryption (CLMMSC) scheme by using the elliptic curve cryptography. To facilitate lightweight deployment, we adapt the certificateless mechanism to reduce the system operation and maintenance costs. Then, through security proofs, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme can achieve the expected security properties. The performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme has lower communication costs than previous CLMMSC schemes.