P²SPA: Privacy Preservation Strategy With Pseudo-Addresses for Edge Computing Networks

In recent years, edge computing networks have been widely adopted to achieve low latency, save bandwidth, and improve flexibility. However, most of the current Edge Nodes (ENs) are in semi-trusted or untrusted environments, where interactions among users are unsafe. Therefore, providing cost-effective protection strategies for ENs under resource limitations remains a great challenge. To cope with this, we propose an edge computing model with “End-Edge-Cloud” collaborative services, and a Privacy Preservation Strategy with Pseudo-Addresses (P2SPA) is constructed to maximize the cost-effectiveness while protecting the location privacy of the ENs. We quantify the privacy protection preference of user information using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to select the optimal EN. Considering the dynamic change in the attack frequency, a pseudo-address selection and updating strategy is constructed based on the Stackelberg game theory; thus, the optimal pseudo-address update frequency is achieved. Numerical estimations are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed P2SPA strategy. Compared with the existing methods, P2SPA achieves a compromise service strategy with satisfactory performance on both the defense effect and defense cost.