On the Security of A Secure Anonymous Identity-Based Scheme in New Authentication Architecture for Mobile Edge Computing

With the rapidly growing user experience and traffic growth requirements in the Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) environment, the conventional security protocols are no longer capable of meeting the modern demand. In order to cope with this demand, novel security solution such as identity-based cryptography, which does not require complex calculations, has attracted great attention from the research community. Recently, Li et al. (IEEE Syst J 1937–9234, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2020.2979006 ) devised an identity-based protocol for the MEC environment. They claimed that their protocol offers efficient and secure communication among the involved entities. Nevertheless, after performing a careful analysis of their protocol, we discovered that their protocol is vulnerable to MEC server and mobile user impersonation attacks. Similarly, their protocol has no provision of mobile user anonymity and untraceability. Furthermore, it has incorrectness in the authentication phase. Given these limitations, we have suggested a suitable remedy, which counters all the said vulnerabilities and limitations.