Biblio

The convergence of Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing is due to the practical necessity for providing broader services to extensive user in distinct environments. However, cloud computing has numerous constraints for applications that require high-mobility and high latency, notably in adversarial situations (e.g. battlefields). These limitations can be elevated to some extent, in a fog computing model because it covers the gap between remote data-center and edge device. Since, the fog nodes are usually installed in remote areas, therefore, they impose the design of fool proof safety solution for a fog-based setting. Thus, to ensure the security and privacy of fog-based environment, numerous schemes have been developed by researchers. In the recent past, Jia et al. (Wireless Networks, DOI: 10.1007/s11276-018-1759-3) designed a fog-based three-party scheme for healthcare system using bilinear. They claim that their scheme can withstand common security attacks. However, in this work we investigated their scheme and show that their scheme has different susceptibilities such as revealing of secret parameters, and fog node impersonation attack. Moreover, it lacks the anonymity of user anonymity and has inefficient login phase. Consequently, we have suggestion with some necessary guidelines for attack resilience that are unheeded by Jia et al.

The maturity of intelligent transportation system, cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technology has encouraged the rapid growth of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). Currently, vehicles are supposed to carry relatively more storage, on board computing facilities, increased sensing power and communication systems. In order to cope with real world demands such as low latency, low storage cost, mobility, etc., for the deployment of VANETs, numerous attempts have been taken to integrate fog-computing with VANETs. In the recent past, Ma et al. (IEEE Internet of Things, pp 2327-4662, 10. 1109/JIOT.2019.2902840) designed “An Efficient and Provably Secure Authenticated Key Agreement Protocol for Fog-Based Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks”. Ma et al. claimed that their protocol offers secure communication in fog-based VANETs and is resilient against several security attacks. However, this comment demonstrates that their scheme is defenseless against vehicle-user impersonation attack and reveals secret keys of vehicle-user and fog-node. Moreover, it fails to offer vehicle-user anonymity and has inefficient login phase. This paper also gives some essential suggestions on strengthening resilience of the scheme, which are overlooked by Ma et al.