Lattice-Based Lightweight Quantum Resistant Scheme in 5G-Enabled Vehicular Networks

Abstract

Both security and privacy are central issues and need to be properly handled because communications are shared among vehicles in open channel environments of 5G-enabled vehicular networks. Several researchers have proposed authentication schemes to address these issues. Nevertheless, these schemes are not only vulnerable to quantum attacks but also use heavy operations to generate and verify signatures of messages. Additionally, these schemes need an expensive component RoadSide Unit (RSU)-aided scheme during the joining phase. To address these issues, we propose a lightweight quantum-resistant scheme according to the lattice method in 5G-enabled vehicular networks. Our proposal uses matrix multiplication instead of operations-based bilinear pair cryptography or operations-based elliptic curve cryptography to generate and verify signatures of messages shared among vehicles. Our proposal satisfies a significant reduction in performance, which makes it lightweight enough to handle quantum attacks. Our proposal is based on 5G technology without using any RSU-aided scheme. Security analysis showed that our proposal satisfies privacy and security properties as well as resists quantum attacks. Finally, our proposal also shows favorable performance compared to other related work.