A Group Signature and Authentication Scheme for Blockchain-Based Mobile-Edge Computing

Blockchain-based mobile-edge computing (BMEC) is an innovative architecture, which is essential in the future fifth-generation (5G) network era. BMEC solves the problem of limited computing resources of devices in the mobile blockchain environment while ensuring the distributed deployment of computing resources and the traceable of transaction data. However, the blockchain technology has many security vulnerabilities, among which attacks against consensus algorithms are particularly serious, i.e., double-spend attacks, long-range attacks, and selfish mining. All of these attacks can break the integrity of BMEC, allowing the correct block record to be overwritten with a false one. In this article, we propose a group signature scheme designed for validating blocks of blockchain to address such issues. Each new block will be regarded as a valid block if it obtains a valid group aggregate signature of the group which the block creator belongs to. We describe in detail the process of authentication and key changes when mobile devices join and leave BMEC. We also provide a more efficient authentication scheme of authenticating mobile devices compared to traditional schemes in BMEC. Last, the security analysis is presented to prove that our proposed group signature scheme is effective.