Secure Mobile Agent Protocol for Vehicular Communication Systems in Smart Cities

Abstract

A Mobile agent (MA) is an intelligent software that performs tasks on behalf of its owner. MAs collect results migrating from one node to another. MAs have a small size and a low requirement of network bandwidth. They also reduce the load on the network making a Mobile Agent System (MAS) a preferred solution in distributed applications. Intelligent Vehicular Communication Systems are an excellent exemplary candidate for such applications. Although MAs flexibility is a great add on to such applications, however, ensuring their security is considered a challenging task due to their openness and flexibility in the network. In this paper, a novel Secure Mobile Agent Protocol (SMAP) dedicated for Vehicular Communication Systems is proposed. SMAP provides the essential security requirements e.g. mutual authentication, confidentiality, integrity, accountability, non-repudiation and authorization. Using SMAP vehicles’ owners receive results as soon as they are requested and therefore, providing fast information retrieval process. Moreover, another important feature of SMAP is that unlike other protocols, the loss of the MA does not necessarily mean the loss of all the collected data. Furthermore, SMAP guarantees protection from many security attacks such as, Man In The Middle (MITM), replay, masquerade, modification, and unauthorized access attacks. Verified using the well-known formal verification tool Scyther, SMAP is proven to be a suitable protocol for securing vehicular communication links from malicious actions. Moreover a security and complexity analysis of SMAP and other related protocols are presented in details. Also, simulation of a SMAP based vehicular communication system application is conducted.