Privacy-preserving Authentication Scheme for VANETs using Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Road accidents and traffic congestion severely impact road safety, resulting in significant loss of life and property. Therefore, there is a need for road safety and traffic management. The wireless networks of connected vehicles called Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) are designed to improve the traffic management on highways with comfort and safety for drivers and passengers. However, there is a need to develop an authentication scheme that can protect the privacy of vehicles and secure them against attacks such as insider attacks and repudiation attacks. In this article, we present a scheme that performs vehicle registration and message forwarding in the VANETs and appends the transactions to the blockchain. The proposed privacy-preserving authentication scheme using blockchain technology enables vehicles and Trusted Authorities (TA) to authenticate vehicles while preserving privacy. The proposed scheme facilitates privacy-preserving authentication by deploying the scheme on a decentralized network. The proposed scheme ensures privacy, confidentiality, integrity, and transparency during vehicle authentication for VANETs. In the proposed scheme, an authentication process is automated with the use of a smart contract. We comparatively evaluate the security and performance of the proposed privacy-preserving authentication scheme with the state-of-the-art literature. The proposed privacy-preserving authentication scheme is significantly reliable and transparent in authenticating vehicles while preserving privacy.