# Secure Coded Cooperative Computation at the Heterogeneous Edge against Byzantine Attacks

## TL;DR

This paper introduces SC3, a secure and efficient coded cooperative computation mechanism for edge computing that defends against Byzantine attacks and adapts to device heterogeneity and variability.

## Contribution

The paper proposes a novel SC3 mechanism combining homomorphic hash functions with coded computation to enhance security and efficiency in heterogeneous edge environments.

## Key findings

- SC3 significantly reduces task completion delay.
- SC3 effectively defends against Byzantine attacks.
- The mechanism adapts to device heterogeneity and time-varying conditions.

## Abstract

Edge computing is emerging as a new paradigm to allow processing data at the edge of the network, where data is typically generated and collected, by exploiting multiple devices at the edge collectively. However, offloading tasks to other devices leaves the edge computing applications at the complete mercy of an attacker. One of the attacks, which is also the focus of this work, is Byzantine attacks, where one or more devices can corrupt the offloaded tasks. Furthermore, exploiting the potential of edge computing is challenging mainly due to the heterogeneous and time-varying nature of the devices at the edge. In this paper, we develop a secure coded cooperative computation mechanism (SC3) that provides both security and computation efficiency guarantees by gracefully combining homomorphic hash functions and coded cooperative computation. Homomorphic hash functions are used against Byzantine attacks and coded cooperative computation is used to improve computation efficiency when edge resources are heterogeneous and time-varying. Simulations results show that SC3 improves task completion delay significantly.