Optical PUF for Non-Forwardable Vehicle Authentication

Abstract

Modern vehicles are configured to exchange warning messages through IEEE 1609 Dedicated Short Range Communication over IEEE 802.11p Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment. Essentially, these warning messages must associate an authentication factor such that the verifier authenticates the message origin via visual binding. Interestingly, the existing vehicle communication incorporates the message forward-ability as a requested feature for numerous applications. On the contrary, a secure vehicular communication relies on a message authentication with respect to the sender identity. Currently, the vehicle security infrastructure is vulnerable to message forwarding in a way that allows an incorrect visual binding with the malicious vehicle, i.e., messages seem to originate from a malicious vehicle due to non-detectable message relaying instead of the actual message sender. We introduce the non-forwardable authentication to avoid an adversary coalition attack scenario. These messages should be identifiable with respect to the immediate sender at every hop. According to a coalition attack scenario, the group of adversaries in coalition adopt the fabricated attributes of a target vehicle and resembles it to be alike. The adversaries in coalition then reroute the eavesdropped messages in order to impersonate the target vehicle. We propose to utilize immediate optical response verification in association with the authenticated key exchange over radio channel. These optical response are generated through hardware means, i.e., a certified Physically Unclonable Function device embedded on the front and rear of the vehicle. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work proposing a solution based on physically unclonable function for a secure non-forwardable vehicle to vehicle authentication. In addition a formal correctness sketch is derived using Strand Space methodology.