2022 International Conference on Blockchain Technology and Information Security (ICBCTIS)
An Edge Computing Data Privacy-Preserving Scheme Based on Blockchain and
Homomorphic Encryption
1st Guangxia Xu*
School of Software Engineering
Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Chongqing, China
xugx@cqupt.edu.cn
2022 International Conference on Blockchain Technology and Information Security (ICBCTIS) | 978-1-6654-9691-9/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICBCTIS55569.2022.00044
3rd Ling Wang
School of Software Engineering
Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Chongqing, China
S201201004@stu.cqupt.edu.cn
Abstract—The rapid increase in the number of mobile smart
devices has led to an exponential growth in user data. With
the access of a large number of heterogeneous edge devices
and the in-depth development of edge computing technology
in various fields, it has brought huge challenges to the
security management and data privacy protection in the edge
computing architecture. Therefore, this paper proposes a
lightweight edge computing data privacy-preserving scheme
based on blockchain and homomorphic encryption. Above all,
set edge computing servers as distributed nodes of the
blockchain network and utilize the decentralization of
blockchain and the non-tamperable characteristics of
information to ensure the distributed storage of data and
information recording. Then, designing a blockchain data
encryption transmission scheme based on homomorphic
encryption which could guarantee data transmission between
edge nodes in the form of homomorphic ciphertext.
Meanwhile, supporting the verification of the legality and
correctness of the transaction in the form of ciphertext.
Simulation experiments show that the method proposed in
this paper can carry out effective data encryption
transmission and has certain application potential.
Keywords-edge computing, blockchain, homomorphic
encryption, privacy-preserving
I. INTRODUCTION
As a distributed technology that integrates Internet
technologies such as P2P, cryptography, and consensus
algorithms, blockchain has become one of the most
promising technologies to meet the security needs of the
Internet of Things (IoT). With the continuous in-depth
development of blockchain technology research, it has
penetrated into various application fields such as edge
computing, financial industry and supply chain [1]. Edge
computing reduces network operation and service delivery
delays by concentrating resources such as computing,
storage, bandwidth, and applications at the edge of the
network [2]. In this way, a high-performance, low-latency
and high-bandwidth service environment can be created to
speed up the rapid download of various content, services
and applications on the network, thus also allowing edge
computing technologies to be innovated and developed in
various fields.
978-1-6654-9691-9/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICBCTIS55569.2022.00044
Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SURATHKAL. Downloaded on November 08,2023 at 17:16:43 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2nd Jiajun Zhang
School of Software Engineering
Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Chongqing, China
S191201009@stu.cqupt.edu.cn
However, edge devices have direct access to users'
private data, which will lead to a series of security risks,
such as leakage of user data, if the edge device is attacked.
Furthermore, in the edge computing scenario, there are a
large number of heterogeneous access devices and the trust
situation of the devices is more complicated. These features
lead to malicious attackers may pretend to be a legitimate
edge node and illegally obtain user data through malicious
requests and other operations [3]. Therefore, some studies
and scholars have proposed the convergence of blockchain
and edge computing. At present, the data and privacy
security protection based on blockchain technology for
edge computing mainly includes the following three
aspects: privacy protection based on encryption
mechanisms [4], architecture or system models [5], and
data access protection based on policies or protocols [6].
Moreover, it is precisely because of the transparency and
open transaction characteristics of blockchain technology
that malicious attackers may even trace the transfer path of
a transaction and the real identity of the user through a large
amount of analysis of blockchain transactions [7].
Therefore, the privacy protection of data for edge
computing and blockchain needs further research.
To solve the problem of ensuring data security under the
edge computing architecture, this paper proposes a data
privacy protection scheme based on blockchain and
homomorphic encryption for edge computing. Utility the
features of the blockchain such as decentralization and
tamper-proof to propose a distributed edge computing
architecture based on blockchain which ensures distributed
data storage and data recording of edge devices. Moreover,
this paper proposes a blockchain data transmission method
based on homomorphic encryption which transformed the
plaintext data transmission of the traditional blockchain
into the homomorphic ciphertext form of data transmission,
and support the completion of data transmission or
transaction legality verification in the ciphertext state.
II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND
METHODOLOGY
To solve the problem that low-end heterogeneous edge
devices are difficult to perform node security verification
services and difficult to achieve lightweight and reliable
156
 data transmission [8]. A data privacy protection scheme for B. Data encryption transmission mechanism
edge computing is proposed, which mainly includes the We take digital asset trading as an example for design,
following contents. but the practical application can be any form of data
A. Multi-Layer Security Management Architecture transmission, such as medical data protection. The
implementation process is shown in figure 2.
The multi-layer management architecture based on
1) key generation: The proposed method first uses
blockchain and edge computing is shown in figure 1, which
mainly includes IoT device layer, edge service layer and public key encryption based on the underlying blockchain
blockchain network layer. technology for local account balance updates. Secondly,
BLOCK 1 BLOCK 2 BLOCK n the Paillier homomorphic algorithm is introduced to
Header Header Header
濕 濕 Version Version
PrevBlockHash
Version
PrevBlockHash
encrypt the transfer amount for encrypted data
PrevBlockHash

濕 濕 濕 MerkleRoot MerkleRoot
……
MerkleRoot
……
transmission and verification. The update and encrypted
……

濕 濕 Transaction 1 Transaction 1 Transaction 1

transmission of account amounts is achieved by the above
Transaction 2
……
Transaction n
Transaction 2
…… Transaction 2
…… two methods.
Transaction n Transaction n
Blockchain network layer a) Homomorphic Key Generation: The generation of
The data is uploaded to the blockchain Paillier homomorphic keys in this stage is performed by
the established key management center. The key
generation process starts with the selection of two large
prime numbers and , and the calculation is carried out
according to equation (1).
=
Edge service device layer ( )= ( − 1, − 1) (1)
IoT devices access edge servers
Then, the parameters of the multiplicative group
modulo are chosen randomly, where =
∈ ∗ and there exists equation (2) holds.
: Smart grid : Smart home : Wisdom park gcd , =1 (2)
: Communication : Intelligent sensor : User Equipment
equipment
Through the above calculation, we can obtain the public
IoT device layer key = ( , ) and the private key =( , ),
Figure 1. Multi-layer security architecture which is ( ) . Homomorphic encryption of data by
public-private key pair ( , ).
Start End b) Public-Private Key Generation: Suppose a transfer
is made from account to account . Account first
Key generation Transaction failed,
withdraw the transaction
chooses the elliptic curve ( , ) and selects a point on
processing
N the elliptic curve as the base point . Next, it chooses the
Private-public key pairs Homomorphic key generation:
largest integer such that ∈ [1, ] , takes as the
k and = ( , )
private key, computes = and discloses it as the
public key. Account sends ( , ), and to
(
(

account .
)=
)=

Perform data 2) Transaction Initiation And Data Encryption: For

Verify that

encryption operations
is true

Y
the plaintext ( < ) to be encrypted, a random
∗
number is randomly selected and the plaintext is
+ (

Use = , Use ( , ) to encrypt

+ (

, to encrypt , , and
respectively
encrypted by the homomorphic public key to
generate a homomorphic ciphertext.
)
)

= ( , )= ∗ (3)
Carry out transaction and
account amount update By homomorphic encryption, the total account, balance
and transfer amount of and are homomorphically
Paillier algorithm is used to
encrypt the account amount
Use private key decryption to
update the local amount of
Transaction encrypted separately. In addition, the transfer amount
and store it in the blockchain both accounts
Verification Process needs to be encrypted using the public key. After
account receives the information, it encodes the transfer
Figure 2. Scheme implementation process amount value to a point on ( , ) , generates a
random integer , and the ciphertext is generated by
The IoT device layer mainly integrates various IoT evaluating:
application scenarios and devices in the real world. Edge ={ , + } (4)
service device layer is composed of various edge service
3) Perform Transactions And Update Account
devices, and each edge server is deployed as node in the
blockchain. Blockchain network layer is composed of Information: Respectively updating the account balances
blocks generated by data interaction between nodes in the of and is a necessary part of the transaction. The first
edge service device layer. The data privacy-preserving step is to update the local amount of both parties, which is
scheme based on homomorphic encryption proposed in this decrypted by the generated public and private keys, so that
paper is developed in the blockchain network layer for users can access and update their account amount
detailed design. information. To be specific, Account adds the account

157

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SURATHKAL. Downloaded on November 08,2023 at 17:16:43 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 total before the transaction to the of the 4) Transaction Verification: Verify the validity of a
transaction amount obtained by decrypting it with the transaction after it has been completed. Check if the
private key, and the decryption calculation is shown in account balance is sufficient to support the transaction or if
equation (5). Then account decodes to get the the transaction was executed correctly. According to the
plaintext , which is the transfer amount . principle of the Paillier homomorphic encryption algorithm,
+ − ( )= + ( )− ( )= 澳 (5) there exists equation (6).
Secondly, the Paillier algorithm is used to encrypt the ( )∗ ( ) = ( ∗( ∗
account balance and publishes it in the network waiting for ) )= + (6)
verification. The amounts of accounts are shown in table 1. That is, the algorithm has additive homomorphism, and
the multiplication operation of the ciphertext is equivalent
to the addition operation of the ciphertext. Therefore, we
can judge whether the transaction is correct by verifying the
validity of equation (7).
TABLE I. LOCAL AND BLOCKCHAIN ACCOUNT AMOUNT.
Before the transaction Transfer After the transaction
Account
Local Blockchain Transfer amount Local Blockchain
Account ( ) = − ( )
Account ( ) = + ( )

+ = ( )∗ ( )
(7) III. EXPERIMENT AND ANALYSIS
+ = ( )∗ ( )
If the data transaction user itself or the authoritative To verify the effectiveness and efficiency of our
regulator wants to check the real data, they can decrypt the proposed scheme, we first test the performance of the
transaction amount or transmitted data by the private key adopted Paillier homomorphic encryption algorithm. The
. The calculation to obtain the plaintext m is shown in tested metrics mainly include encryption, decryption, key
equation (8). generation and homomorphic time of the algorithm at
different key bits. The experimental results are shown in
= (8) figure 3 and figure 4.

Figure 3. Algorithm performance test results Figure 4. Algorithm homomorphism performance test results

Figure 5. Throughput test results Figure 6. Latency test results

158

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SURATHKAL. Downloaded on November 08,2023 at 17:16:43 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 As can be seen from figure 3 and figure 4, the
computation time consuming of each operation of this
algorithm increases with the increasing number of key bits,
and users can choose different key bits according to their
security needs. In our practical application, the decryption
operation is only performed when the user or the key
management center needs to verify the transaction, while
the encryption operation is required for each data
transmission, and it can be seen from the test that all
operations are millisecond level, which can meet the
practical application requirements.
In order to verify the effectiveness and practical
feasibility of the proposed scheme, this paper designs smart
contracts and key implementation modules on the
Hyperledger Fabric platform, and conducts performance
tests on the prototype blockchain system of the scheme,
mainly including throughput and latency tests of
initialization, information query and transaction operations
under different numbers of concurrency. The Open
operation refers to the initialization of various workload
modules, and the Query operation refers to the query of
account information. The Transfer operation corresponds to
the transfer operation between accounts [9], and it can be
seen from figure 5 that the proposed method is feasible in
application and can maintain excellent performance.
In addition, this paper tests the latency of the above
three operations, and it can be seen from figure 6 that the
time of each operation fluctuates at different numbers of
concurrency, and the difference between the maximum and
minimum latency is not large, and the error range is in the
order of seconds, so the prototype system has a stable
performance.
CONCLUSIONS
For the risk of data leakage in edge computing and the
trust problem brought by heterogeneous end devices, this
paper proposes a data privacy protection scheme based on
blockchain and homomorphic encryption. Firstly, a multi-
layer security management structure based on blockchain is
established. Secondly, this paper proposes a lightweight
data transmission privacy protection method to achieve
encrypted data transmission based on homomorphic
encryption. Through experiments and analysis, our
159
Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SURATHKAL. Downloaded on November 08,2023 at 17:16:43 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
proposed scheme has application potential in the field of
edge computing and blockchain security.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation (Grant No. 61772099, Grant No.
61772098, Grant No. 61802039); the Science and
Technology Innovation Leadership Support Program of
Chongqing (Grant No. CSTCCXLJRC201917); the
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Demonstration Team
Cultivation Plan of Chongqing (Grant No. CSTC2017kjrc-
cxcytd0063); Chongqing Research Program of Basic
Research and Frontier Technology (Grant No.
cstc2018jcyjAX0617); the Science and Technology
Planning Project of Guangzhou (Grant No.202102080382);
the Scientific Research Project of the Open University of
Guangdong(Grant No. RC2001).
REFERENCES
[1] G Xu, Y Liu and P W Khan, Improvement of the DPoS consensus
mechanism in Blockchain based on vague sets IEEE Trans. Ind.
Inform., 16(6) pp. 4252-4259, 2019.
[2] X Xu, X Zhang and H Gao, BeCome: blockchain-enabled
computation offloading for IoT in mobile edge computing IEEE
Trans. Ind. Inform., 16(6) pp. 4187-4195, 2019.
[3] R Yang, F Yu and P Si, Integrated Blockchain and Edge Computing
Systems: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges IEEE
Commun. Surv. Tutor., 21(2) pp. 1508-1532, 2019.
[4] Y Gao, Y Chen and X Hu, Blockchain Based IIoT Data Sharing
Framework for SDN-Enabled Pervasive Edge Computing IEEE
Trans. Ind. Inform., 17(7) pp. 5041-5049, 2020.
[5] Z Xiong, Y Zhang and N Dusit, When Mobile Blockchain Meets
Edge Computing IEEE Commun. Mag. 56(8) pp. 33-39, 2017.
[6] J Wang, L Wu and K Choo, Blockchain-Based Anonymous
Authentication with Key Management for Smart Grid Edge
Computing Infrastructure, IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform., 16(3) 1984-
1992, 2019.
[7] G Xu, J Dong and C Ma, 2021 A certificateless encryption scheme
based on blockchain Peer Peer Netw. Appl., 3-4 pp. 1-9, 2021.
[8] X Jia, D He and N Kumar, A provably secure and efficient identity-
based anonymous authentication scheme for mobile edge
computing IEEE Syst. J., 14(1) pp. 560-571, 2019.
[9] H Huang, J Cai and S Xie, Proc. Int. Conf. Cyber-Enabled Distrib.
Comput. Knowl. Discov., CyberC (Guilin) (Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers Inc) pp. 219-226, 2019.