Sybil attack resistant location privacy in VANET

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are more susceptible to Sybil attack where a malicious vehicle compromises a road side unit (RSU) and behaves as multiple vehicles. Thus, an efficient mechanism is essential to identify the attacker, compromised RSU, and location privacy of anonymous vehicles. This paper proposes a Sybil attack resistant location privacy (SARLP) system to identify the attacker even when a compromised RSU is present in the VANET. The SARLP system employs a location privacy unit (LPU) and provides a robust authentication mechanism. A secret random number verification at the interference range of two RSUs identifies the compromised RSU. The SARLP system efficiently provides complete location privacy to the vehicles against Sybil attack. The simulation results show that the SARLP system achieves a high level of location privacy of vehicles and attack resilience compared to the existing footprint scheme.