Efficient Privacy-Preserving Chatting Scheme with Degree of Interest Verification for Vehicular Social Networks

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Wireless communication capabilities of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have been utilized in various cutting-edge applications such as Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs). One of the benefits of VSNs is sharing of common-interest information among vehicle drivers. Drivers may benefit from identifying neighbors that have interest common with them along with the extent of their interest. However, there are some privacy issues that should be addressed. Revealing the nature and degree of interests (DOI) of drivers can be in violation of their privacy. In this paper, we propose an efficient chatting scheme among drivers that preserves such privacy. We use attribute based encryption (ABE) technique for anonymous common interest verification and homomorphic encryption technique for anonymous DOI verification. Moreover, we propose an efficient search mechanism to enable vehicles to check if they have common interests with low computation and communication overhead. To secure conversation, a key agreement protocol is used to enable the drivers that have the same interest and the desired DOI to establish a shared secret key. Our extensive evaluations demonstrate that our scheme can successfully preserve drivers' privacy with low communication and computation overhead.