A Lightweight Bidirectional Secure Authentication Protocol for Mobile Edge Computing in <scp>6G</scp> Networks

ABSTRACT With the rapid development of 6G networks, the era of interconnectivity is fully upon us, accompanied by an explosive increase in the number of mobile smart devices. Solutions centered on cloud computing often fail to meet the real‐time computing requirements of mobile smart devices and place significant demands on energy consumption and bandwidth. To address these challenges, edge computing has become a necessity. By deploying mobile edge computing systems close to the sources of information, it is possible to meet the demands for real‐time services, data analysis optimization, and intelligent applications on mobile devices. Focusing on the issue of identity secure authentication between mobile devices and mobile edge computing servers in mobile edge computing scenarios, this paper proposes a lightweight bidirectional secure authentication protocol using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Constructed with elliptic curve encryption and hash functions, the protocol achieves features such as bidirectional secure authentication, anonymity protection for mobile users, and untraceability of mobile users, while also resisting various threats such as replay attacks and man‐in‐the‐middle attacks. Through performance analysis and comparison with similar protocols, the proposed protocol demonstrates a low overall computational cost, making it particularly suitable for mobile smart devices with limited computing resources. Furthermore, the protocol was implemented using tools such as Visual Studio, and its performance was analyzed to illustrate its practical applicability and reliability.