Attribute identification based IoT fog data security control and forwarding

Jingxu Xiao; Chaowen Chang; Ping Wu; Yingying Ma

doi:10.7717/peerj-cs.1747

Attribute identification based IoT fog data security control and forwarding

PeerJ Comput Sci. 2023 Dec 20:9:e1747. doi: 10.7717/peerj-cs.1747. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jingxu Xiao¹, Chaowen Chang¹, Ping Wu¹, Yingying Ma^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Information Engineering University of the Army Strategic Support Force, Zhengzhou, China.
² Zhengzhou University of Technology, Zhengzhou, China.

Abstract

As Internet of Things (IoT) applications continue to proliferate, traditional cloud computing is increasingly unable to meet the low-latency demands of these applications. The IoT fog architecture solves this limitation by introducing fog servers in the fog layer that are closer to the IoT devices. However, this architecture lacks authentication mechanisms for information sources, security verification for information transmission, and reasonable allocation of fog nodes. To ensure the secure transmission of end-to-end information in the IoT fog architecture, an attribute identification based security control and forwarding method for IoT fog data (AISCF) is proposed. AISCF applies attribute signatures to the IoT fog architecture and uses software defined network (SDN) to control and forward fog layer data flows. Firstly, IoT devices add attribute identifiers to the data they send based on attribute features. The ingress switch then performs fine-grained access control on the data based on these attribute identifiers. Secondly, SDN uses attribute features as flow table matching items to achieve fine-grained control and forwarding of fog layer data flows based on attribute identifiers. Lastly, the egress switch dynamically samples data flows and verifies the attribute signatures of the sampled data packets at the controller end. Experimental validation has demonstrated that AISCF can effectively detect attacks such as data tampering and forged matching items. Moreover, AISCF imposes minimal overhead on network throughput, CPU utilization and packet forwarding latency, and has practicality in IoT fog architecture.

Keywords: Access control; Attribute-based signature; IoT-Fog security; Packet verification; Software defined network.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61572517). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.