Fast-track message authentication protocol for DSRC using HMAC and group keys

Abstract

The exchange of information between vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) should be secured to provide an intelligent transport system. VANET uses certificate revocation lists (CRL) and public key infrastructures (PKI) for its security. In any PKI algorithms validity of the messages received from the sender is executed by checking the senders certificate in current CRL and verify the authenticity of the signature and certificate of the sender. Checking the CRL and verifying the authenticity is time-consuming and affects system performance drastically. This paper offers an accelerated and secure authentication method that utilizes a hash message authentication code (HMAC) in combination with secret keys for the revocation checking process. By using HMAC and enhancing the CRL checking procedure, the algorithm provides improved performance of the system parameters like authentication delay, end-to-end delay, and packet delivery ratio. Also, this algorithm reduces the delay involved in vehicle authentication. This novel algorithm uses the random distribution of keys that enables the authenticated on-board unit to securely share and update a secret key. An authentication delay of 77.29 μs, end-to-end delay of 13.56 ms and packet delivery ratio of 81.2% is achieved.