Verifiable Key-Aggregate Searchable Encryption Scheme for Fog-Based Internet of Autonomous Vehicles

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article's subject is current. Technological progress, including the future related to autonomous vehicles, forces the need for continuous improvement of available methods and tools to improve data security during exchange between objects and computing clouds, of which fog computing architecture is becoming indispensable.

The article's title fully covers its substantive content. The division of content between the individual parts of the article is correct. The purpose and research hypotheses are defined and verified.

The literature review allowed the authors to find research gaps that their article covers (e.g. presented in Tables 1 and 2). They introduced a novel multi-keyword searchable scheme for FIoT-AV using a verified blockchain. They first proposed a multi-keyword aggregation (MKA) technique to do this. It securely aggregates keys by leveraging blockchain technology and Keyword Search Encryption (KSE). It has been done to prevent vehicles from accessing the keyword information of (dr). Secondly, the authors proposed a dual verifiable technique that does not rely on bilinear pairing, thereby providing lightweight verification for search results.

The results obtained in the article were verified in terms of data security goals. The authors also conducted analyses of computational and memory complexity. To validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed scheme, they implemented the smart contract on the Hyperledger platform and conducted resource consumption tests.

The research was appropriately planned. The authors moved from indicating a research gap by discussing basic, well-known definitions and methods related to cryptography to proposing their approach to the defined problem. Thus, the techniques used in the work and proposed in it are described in full. The mathematical side of the methods and the algorithm's parts also seem correct.

The conclusions wholly result from the results obtained in the work. Although there may be a lack of plans for further development of the proposed methods, this does not affect the very high assessment of this article.

It should be emphasized that the language of the work is legible and understandable to the recipient.

Therefore, considering the above, I do not find any imperfections that would require the authors to correct. Hence, I propose to accept the article in its unchanged form.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Comments: The article's subject is current. Technological progress, including the future related to autonomous vehicles, forces the need for continuous improvement of available methods and tools to improve data security during exchange between objects and computing clouds, of which fog computing architecture is becoming indispensable.The article's title fully covers its substantive content. The division of content between the individual parts of the article is correct. The purpose and research hypotheses are defined and verified. The literature review allowed the authors to find research gaps that their article covers (e.g. presented in Tables 1 and 2). They introduced a novel multi-keyword searchable scheme for FIoT-AV using a verified blockchain. They first proposed a multi-keyword aggregation (MKA) technique to do this. It securely aggregates keys by leveraging blockchain technology and Keyword Search Encryption (KSE). It has been done to prevent vehicles from accessing the keyword information of (dr). Secondly, the authors proposed a dual verifiable technique that does not rely on bilinear pairing, thereby providing lightweight verification for search results. The results obtained in the article were verified in terms of data security goals. The authors also conducted analyses of computational and memory complexity. To validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed scheme, they implemented the smart contract on the Hyperledger platform and conducted resource consumption tests. The research was appropriately planned. The authors moved from indicating a research gap by discussing basic, well-known definitions and methods related to cryptography to proposing their approach to the defined problem. Thus, the techniques used in the work and proposed in it are described in full. The mathematical side of the methods and the algorithm's parts also seem correct. The conclusions wholly result from the results obtained in the work. Although there may be a lack of plans for further development of the proposed methods, this does not affect the very high assessment of this article. It should be emphasized that the language of the work is legible and understandable to the recipient. Therefore, considering the above, I do not find any imperfections that would require the authors to correct. Hence, I propose to accept the article in its unchanged form.

Response: Thank you for your time and efforts.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper presents a verifiable key aggregate searchable encryption scheme for autonomous vehicles. Some suggestions and concerns are as follows.

1. Could the authors revise or update the title of this paper? 'Fog-Based Internet of Things Autonomous Vehicles' seems to be the simple stack of several nouns, especially 'Internet of Things Autonomous Vehicles'.
2. The presentation of this work can be further improved. For example, the authors could summarize their contributions using bullet points so as to enhance the readability of this paper.
3. It is happy to see that most of the references are up-to-date. However, I did not believe that a total of 20 references could support such a research. Therefore, it would be better for the authors to cite more related ferences and summarize their main contributions in related work.
4. This paper can be regarded as a theoretical work to some extent. The authors are recommended to add more intuitive explanations for the formulas.
5. To be frank, after reading the paper, I failed to find too much content about autonomous vehicles. In other words, the presented scheme seems to be less specific, but somewhat generic. Please give more explanations.

Overall, I think it is a good work and can be considered for publication after minor revisions.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Comments: This paper presents a verifiable key aggregate searchable encryption scheme for autonomous vehicles. Some suggestions and concerns are as follows.

1. Could the authors revise or update the title of this paper? 'Fog-Based Internet of Things Autonomous Vehicles' seems to be the simple stack of several nouns, especially 'Internet of Things Autonomous Vehicles'.
2. The presentation of this work can be further improved. For example, the authors could summarize their contributions using bullet points so as to enhance the readability of this paper.
3. It is happy to see that most of the references are up-to-date. However, I did not believe that a total of 20 references could support such a research. Therefore, it would be better for the authors to cite more related ferences and summarize their main contributions in related work.
4. This paper can be regarded as a theoretical work to some extent. The authors are recommended to add more intuitive explanations for the formulas.
5. To be frank, after reading the paper, I failed to find too much content about autonomous vehicles. In other words, the presented scheme seems to be less specific, but somewhat generic. Please give more explanations.

Overall, I think it is a good work and can be considered for publication after minor revisions.

 

Response: Thank you for your time and efforts. We responded your comments as follows:

1. Based on your valuable comment, we updated the title as highlighted in the revised version.
2. Based on your valuable comment, we update the summarize of contributions using bullet points as highlighted in the revised version.
3. Based on your valuable comment, we added some references as highlighted in the revised version.
4. We updated the manuscript and added formal scheme explanations in the Preliminaries section as highlighted in the revised version.
5. We highlighted the explanations of the scheme in the revised version.

 

 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors of this paper claim that the fog-based Internet of Things autonomous vehicle (FIoT-AV) collects extensive sensing data to enhance its understanding of the environment, but has flaws such as increased risk of key leakage and the fog server can be manipulated to alter search results.  To tackle these problems, the authors offer a new blockchain-verifiable multiple-keywords searching method for FIoT-AV. At first glance, the proposed scheme is based on key-aggregate searchable encryption, which achieves safe key aggregation by using blockchain technology and an oblivious search request. Thenperformance study shows that the proposed scheme is both significantly feasible and scalable.

To prove their statements, the authors do so using theorems that use many variables that are not defined in the text. For a better understanding, the authors could define these variables somewhere.

In the text, there are several equations without numbering which makes it difficult to comprehend them.

Could the authors explain equation (1)?

• What is the main question addressed by the research?    -  The authors present a novel multi-keyword searchable scheme for FIoT-AV using
a verified blockchain • Do you consider the topic original or relevant to the field? Does it
address a specific gap in the field? Please also explain why this is/ is not
the case.    I consider this topic relevant for the development of the FIoT-AV using a verified blockchain. • What does it add to the subject area compared with other published
material?    The use of a verified blockchain. • What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the
methodology?   There is not a section called methodology. • Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented
and do they address the main question posed? Please also explain why this
is/is not the case.   - Yes • Are the references appropriate?   Yes • Any additional comments on the tables and figures. -No

After these corrections, the text may be considered for publication.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are some typos like

-shows that the the proposed

and others.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

Comments: The authors of this paper claim that the fog-based Internet of Things autonomous vehicle (FIoT-AV) collects extensive sensing data to enhance its understanding of the environment, but has flaws such as increased risk of key leakage and the fog server can be manipulated to alter search results.  To tackle these problems, the authors offer a new blockchain-verifiable multiple-keywords searching method for FIoT-AV. At first glance, the proposed scheme is based on key-aggregate searchable encryption, which achieves safe key aggregation by using blockchain technology and an oblivious search request. Thenperformance study shows that the proposed scheme is both significantly feasible and scalable.

• To prove their statements, the authors do so using theorems that use many variables that are not defined in the text.For a better understanding, the authors could define these variables somewhere.
• In the text, there are several equations without numbering which makes it difficult to comprehend them.

 

 

Response: Thank you for your time and efforts. We responded your comments as follows:

 

1. Based on your valuable comments, we added a new table defines the most variables used in this paper, as highlighted in the revised version.
2. We updated the revised manuscript by numbering several equations as highlighted in the revised version.