A verifiable data integrity scheme for distributed data sharing in fog computing architecture

Fog computing is a promising computing paradigm that brings computing resources close to end users at the edge of the network. Hence, it handles large-scale, geographically distributed, and latency-sensitive services. However, there are several security challenges that must be addressed due to the unreliable nature of this architecture. One can cite the verification of data integrity among the most critical issues in the context of fog computing. In fact, since data is often stored dynamically in a fully distributed manner, traditional solutions based on a centralized third-party auditor for integrity verification become unsuitable for such highly dynamic and distributed contexts. Indeed, the constant transfer of data to and from the central auditor results in high network latency and potential bottlenecks. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new efficient public verification protocol that ensures the integrity of the data in fog computing architecture. Our solution protects data integrity and authenticity using the short integer solution problem (SIS) and identity-based signatures. Moreover, in order to legitimately modify the data, our protocol allows to distributively identify the data owners and to delegate their signatures to other entities in the architecture. Furthermore, it enables effective data integrity verification even when data is separately shared across several servers. This verification can be performed by any legitimate end user connected to the architecture, and without relying on any trusted third party. Finally, we prove that our protocol is highly efficient and outperforms existing solutions, as demonstrated by our extensive simulations and thorough security analysis that confirmed its security.