ZeroVCS: An efficient authentication protocol without trusted authority for zero-trust vehicular communication systems

Abstract

Vehicular communication systems can provide two types of communications: Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V). However, in both cases, there is zero-trust between the communicating entities. This may give privilege to the unauthorized vehicles to join the network. Hence, a strong authentication protocol is required to ensure proper access control and communication security. In traditional protocols, such tasks are typically accomplished via a central Trusted Authority (TA). However, communication with TA may increase the overall authentication delay. Such delay may be incompatible with the future generation vehicular communication systems, where dense deployment of small-cells are required to ensure higher system capacity and seamless mobility (e.g., 5G onward). Further, TA may suffer from denial-of-service when the number of access requests becomes excessively large, because each request must be forwarded to TA for authentication and access control. In this article, we put forward an efficient authentication protocol without trusted authority for zero-trust vehicular communication systems, called ZeroVCS. It does not involve TA for authentication and access control, thus improving the authentication delay, reducing the chance of denial-of-service, and ensuring compatibility with the future generation vehicular communication systems. ZeroVCS can also provide communication security under various passive and active attacks. Finally, the performance-based comparison proves the efficiency of ZeroVCS.