Enhancing trust and security in IoT computing offloading through game theory and blockchain‐based control strategy

Abstract

SummaryCollaboration between IoT end‐devices and edge servers or idle devices enables offloading of computational tasks, providing an effective solution to address inherent limitations in computational resources, storage capacity, and energy efficiency. However, IoT network openness introduces security challenges, such as privacy breaches, data security, and “free‐riding” attack. Securing computational offloading is crucial for service quality and reliability. In this article, we introduce a comprehensive approach to address these challenges. First, trust metrics are performed at the level of resource requester and resource provider respectively, and the trust level of both parties is matched to reduce the adverse effects of malicious devices or servers on computing offloading. Then, a distributed decision‐making method based on game theory is designed to improve the performance of the algorithm and avoid the single‐point‐of‐failure problem through the joint participation of multiple edge servers in decision‐making. Finally, a blockchain‐based task offloading process control strategy is used to deal with the “free‐riding” attack. The results of simulation experiments show the effectiveness of our proposed offloading decision‐making method.