Privacy In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Research Articles

A quantum-secure certificateless aggregate signature protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have revolutionized communication between vehicles and infrastructure, notably enhancing traffic management and passenger safety. However, VANETs are vulnerable to security threats, especially regarding data authenticity. Aggregate signature is a powerful technique that reduces computational and communication burdens by aggregating multiple signatures from different signers into a single signature. Traditional aggregate signature schemes, based on large prime number decomposition and the discrete logarithm problem, cannot effectively resist quantum attacks. This paper introduces a novel quantum secure certificateless aggregate signature (QSCLAS) scheme designed to enhance data security and privacy in VANETs. Our proposed scheme employs the number theory research unit (NTRU) algorithm. As a lattice-based cryptographic algorithm, NTRU is renowned for its security against quantum computer attacks, making it an essential component of our quantum-secure solution. By eliminating the need for expensive bilinear pairing operations, our proposed scheme achieves high efficiency and practicality in resource-limited VANETs environments. The security analysis demonstrates our scheme's resilience against both Type-I and Type-II adversaries in the random oracle model under the small integer solution (SIS) problem on the NTRU lattice. Furthermore, compared with existing approaches, the results illustrate that our proposed scheme offers significant advantages in signature generation and verification cost, as well as lower transmission overhead than other lattice-based schemes, thereby making it highly suitable for VANETs environments.

A pseudonym-based certificateless privacy-preserving authentication scheme for VANETs

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology, Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) is gradually becoming a key component for establishing core applications such as smart cities and the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). However, due to the wireless multi-hop communication, VANETs is vulnerable to attacks. Therefore, the implementation of legitimacy authentication and conditional privacy preserving among entities in VANETs is a necessary prerequisite to ensure the security of VANETs. This paper proposes a secure and efficient conditional privacy preserving scheme for VANETs. Under the premise of guaranteeing the conditional privacy in VANETs, the anonymous authentication scheme is constructed by combining the pseudonym-based mechanism and the certificateless signature mechanism. Moreover, the scheme has great advantages in fast revocation of vehicles, and ensures that the pseudonyms cannot be linked before being traced. Security analysis proves that the proposed scheme is able to meet the privacy protection requirements in VANETs. In addition, the performance evaluation shows that the efficiency of the proposed scheme is significantly improved compared with the state-of-art schemes.

CREASE: Certificateless and REused-pseudonym based Authentication Scheme for Enabling security and privacy in VANETs

Due to the customers’ growing interest in using various intelligent and connected devices, we are surrounded by the Internet of Things (IoT). It is estimated that the number of IoT devices will exceed 60 billion by 2025. One of the primary reasons for such rapid growth is the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has evolved into an emerging concept in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that integrates VANETs and the IoT to enhance their capabilities. With the emergence of IoV and the interest shown by customers, Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) are likely to be widely deployed in the near future. However, for this to happen, wide participation of vehicle owners in VANET is needed. The primary concerns of vehicle owners to participate in VANET are privacy and security. In this paper, we present a Certificateless and REused-pseudonym based Authentication Scheme for Enabling security and privacy (CREASE) in VANETs. One of the ways to preserve the privacy of vehicles/drivers is to allow vehicles/drivers to use pseudo identities (pseudonyms) instead of their real identities (such as VIN number or driving license number) in all communications. The pseudonym used by a vehicle needs to be changed frequently to prevent the vehicle from being tracked. Our scheme uses Merkle Hash Tree and Modified Merkle Patricia Trie to efficiently store and manage the pseudonyms assigned to a vehicle. This enables a vehicle to pick and use a random pseudonym from a given set of pseudonyms assigned to it as well as change its pseudonym frequently and securely to ensure privacy. Unlike many of the existing schemes, our scheme does not use certificates and certificate revocation lists for authentication. Moreover, it allows vehicles to get a set of pseudonyms only once from the trusted authority. We present a formal proof of correctness of our scheme and also compare our scheme with some of the other contemporary schemes to show the effectiveness of our scheme.

Location privacy in VANETs: Provably secure anonymous key exchange protocol based on self-blindable signatures

Security and privacy in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are challenging in terms of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) features. The distribution and decentralisation of vehicles could threaten location privacy and confidentiality in the absence of trusted third parties (TTP)s or if they are otherwise compromised. If the same digital signatures (or the same certificates) are used for different communications, then adversaries could easily apply linking attacks. Unfortunately, most of the existing schemes for VANETs in the literature do not satisfy the required levels of security, location privacy, and efficiency simultaneously. This paper presents a new and efficient end-to-end anonymous key exchange protocol based on Yang et al. 's self-blindable signatures. In our protocol, vehicles first privately blind their own private certificates for each communication outside the mix-zone and then compute an anonymous shared key based on zero-knowledge proof of knowledge (PoK). The efficiency comes from the fact that once the signatures are verified, the ephemeral values in PoK are also used to compute a shared key through an authenticated Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. Therefore, the protocol does not require any further external information to generate a shared key. Our protocol also does not require an interference with the Roadside Units or Certificate Authorities, and hence can be securely run outside the mixed-zones. We demonstrate the security of our protocol in an ideal/real simulation paradigm. Hence, our protocol achieves secure authentication, forward unlinkability, and accountability. Furthermore, the performance analysis shows that our protocol is more efficient in terms of computational and communication overheads compared to existing schemes.

Secure and Efficient Communication in VANETs Using Level-Based Access Control

In recent years, the development of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) has received much attention in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Unlike traditional ad-hoc networks, VANETs are emerging with unique characteristics that share similar technology with autonomous vehicles (AVs) and automated driving systems (ASDs). Communication between vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure unit, such as a roadside unit (RSU), must be secured, concise, and authentic. Hence, an access control system for the ad-hoc environment is required. We introduced a level-based controlled signcryption (LBS) scheme, which can be easily constructed and implemented into an access control system for VANETs environment. Our encrypted message has a short and constant size, which is better when compared with other attribute-based signcryption or encryption. Confidentiality, privacy, and authenticity are also provided in our scheme to ensure secure and authentic communication. Therefore, our scheme has addressed communication cost, scalability, security, and privacy issues in VANETs. This primitive can be applied to simplify attribute-based access control, as the only attribute required is an integer representing the security level. Our objective is to improve the quality and security of VANET communication. Moreover, an optional privacy mechanism in our scheme provides flexibility in controlling node privacy in VANETs.

A Lightweight BT-Based Authentication Scheme for Illegal Signatures Identification in VANETs

Research related to vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) has received some significant attention in recent years. Despite all the advantages, the security and privacy in VANETs still become the main challenge that is widely open to discussion. The authentication scheme plays a substantial role to guarantee the security and privacy of information circulation and verification efficiency in VANETs. In this high-density environment, a scalability issue would emerge when the number of message-signature pairs received by a roadside unit (RSU) or vehicles becomes large. This issue happens because those entities cannot sequentially verify each received signature according to the required time limit. Some researchers believe that the symmetric cryptography-based authentication scheme provides a lightweight verification operation, which leads to low computation and communication costs. Combined with the batch verification process, this approach can be very beneficial. However, to the best of our knowledge, not many of those related schemes provide a realistic scenario regarding some illegal signatures’ appearance. Could the system identify the forged messages? Is it still efficient enough to do such an operation? In this paper, we propose a lightweight binary tree-based (BT-based) authentication scheme with a batch verification mechanism, that could efficiently identify a modest amount of illegal signatures in the sum of messages. To even improve the operation, we combine our BT-based batch verification scheme with our vehicle reputation scoring system. Given any <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</i> received messages with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">b</i> ≥ 1 illegal ones, the computation cost to verify all these messages only requires approximately (2[⌈lg <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</i> ⌉ - lg(⌈ b/2 ⌉2)] + 2 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">⌈lg(⌈ b/2 ⌉2)⌉+1</sup> - 1) pairing operations, as the best-case scenario. By this approach, we can guarantee the best-case scenario (the most desirable condition) in our BT-based identification appear as much as possible. Hence, the computation cost can be kept low.

An Enhanced Privacy Preserving, Secure and Efficient Authentication Protocol for VANET

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have attracted growing interest in both academia and industry because they can provide a viable solution that improves road safety and comfort for travelers on roads. However, wireless communications over open-access environments face many security and privacy issues that may affect deployment of large-scale VANETs. Researchers have proposed different protocols to address security and privacy issues in a VANET, and in this study we cryptanalyze some of the privacy preserving protocols to show that all existing protocols are vulnerable to the Sybil attack. The Sybil attack can be used by malicious actors to create fake identities that impair existing protocols, which allows them to imitate traffic congestion or at worse cause an accident that may result in the loss of human life. This vulnerability exists because those protocols store vehicle identities in an encrypted form, and it is not possible to search over the encrypted identities to find fake vehicles. This attack is serious in nature and very prevalent for privacy-preserving protocols. To cope with this kind of attack, we propose a novel and practical protocol that uses Public key encryption with an equality test (PKEET) to search over the encrypted identities without leaking any information, and eventually eliminate the Sybil attack. The proposed approach improves security and at the same time maintains privacy in VANET. Our performance analysis indicates that the proposed protocol outperforms state-of-the-art protocols: The proposed beacon generation time is constant compared to a linear increase in existing protocols, with beacon verification shown to be faster by 7.908%. Our communicational analysis shows that the proposed protocol with a beacon size of 322 bytes has the least communicational overhead compared to other state-of-the-art protocols.

A novel trust management method to preserve privacy in vehicular ad-hoc networks

Vehicular ad-hoc network is one of the networks based on wireless sensor networks which, nowadays, plays a crucial role in life. Due to the autonomy of each vehicle, trust management can prevent many probable attacks. Every vehicle must be able to announce its trust; however, this announcement makes other vehicles able to locate that vehicle as well. Therefore, the present study is aimed at presenting a new method to preserve privacy and stop tracing the vehicle after trust announcement. In the proposed method, roadside unit, while changing the vehicle’s pseudonym, announces its trust with uncertainty. The trust announced by the roadside unit is not related to the previous trust, therefore, it would be impossible for other vehicles to recognize that vehicle. The simulation results revealed that it is impossible to recognize the vehicle through trust, also, the lack of the announced trust is trustworthy and capable of being used in calculations.

A Survey on Privacy-Preserving Authentication Schemes in VANETs: Attacks, Challenges and Open Issues

Vehicular ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are an emerging technology with robust applications in Intelligent Transport System. It consists of smart vehicles and roadside infrastructure which communicate through open access wireless networks. The rapid growth in vehicles results in VANETs becoming large-scale, dynamic, heterogeneous and it is possible for the attacker to harm vehicular communication which leads to life-endangering situations. VANETs must ensure secured vehicular communication using strong privacy-preserving and authentication mechanisms. In addition, efficiency is also a major concern in VANETs. Numerous studies have been discussed in literature for VANETs privacy and security. Nevertheless, no one covered the privacy and security issues as a holistic view. In this paper, we have given a detailed background overview of VANETs. Details of different possible attacks in VANET are also given in this paper. We have classified privacy and authentication schemes into four major groups with their security mechanisms, security requirements, strength, limitations, attacks countermeasures and performance measures. Finally, we have discussed some open issues in the field of VANETs security.

Survey of Authentication and Privacy Schemes in Vehicular ad hoc Networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have become increasingly common in recent years due to their critical role in the field of smart transportation by supporting Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication. The security and privacy of VANET are of the utmost importance due to the use of an open wireless communication medium where messages are exchanged in plain text, something which allows attackers to intercept, tamper, replay, and delete them. Hence, there is a high probability that the safety of a VANET-based smart transportation system could be compromised. Nowadays, securing and safeguarding the exchange of messages in VANETs is the focus of many security research teams, as reflected by the number of authentication and privacy schemes that have been proposed. However, these schemes have not fulfilled all aspects of the security and privacy requirements. The present paper is an effort to provide a thorough background on VANETs and their components; various types of attacks on them; and all the security and privacy requirements for authentication and privacy schemes for VANETs. This paper is among the first to provide a comprehensive survey of the existing authentication and privacy schemes and compare them based on all security and privacy requirements, computational and communicational overheads, and the level of resistance to different types of attacks. It also provides a qualitative comparison with the existing surveys. This paper could serve as a guide and reference in the design and development of any new security and privacy techniques for VANETs.

Optimal solution for malicious node detection and prevention using hybrid chaotic particle dragonfly swarm algorithm in VANETs

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have the ability to make changes in travelling and driving mode of people and so on, in which vehicle can broadcast and forward the message related to emergency or present road condition. The safety and efficiency of modern transportation system is highly improved using VANETs. However, the vehicular communication performance is weakened with the sudden emergence of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Among other attacks, DDoS attack is the fastest attack degrading the VANETs performance due to its node mobility nature. Also, the attackers (cyber terrorists, politicians, etc.) have now considered the DDoS attack as a network service degradation weapon. In current trend, there is a quick need for mitigation and prevention of DDoS attacks in the exploration field. To resolve the conflict of privacy preservation, we propose a fast and secure HCPDS based framework for DDoS attack detection and prevention in VANETs. The Road Side Units (RSUs) have used HCPDS algorithm to evaluate the fitness values of all vehicles. This evaluation process is done for effective detection of spoofing and misbehaving nodes by comparing the obtained fitness value with the statistical information (packet factors, RSU zone, and vehicle dynamics) gathered from the vehicles. The credentials of all worst nodes are cancelled to avoid further communication with other vehicles. In HCPDS algorithm, the PSO updation strategy is added to Dragon fly algorithm to improve the search space. In addition, Chaos theory is applied to tune the parameters of proposed HCPDS algorithm. From the experimental results, it proved that the HCPDS based proposed approach can efficiently meet the requirements of security and privacy in VANETs.

An efficient voting based decentralized revocation protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) enable cooperative behaviors in vehicular environments and are seen as an integral component of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). The security of VANETs is crucial for their successful deployment and widespread adoption. A critical aspect of preserving the security and privacy of VANETs is the efficient revocation of the ability of misbehaving or malicious vehicles to participate in the network. This is usually achieved by revoking the validity of the digital certificates of the offending nodes and by maintaining and distributing an accurate Certificate Revocation List (CRL). The immediate revocation of misbehaving vehicles is of prime importance for the safety of other vehicles and users. In this paper, we present a decentralized revocation approach based on Shamir’s secret sharing to revoke misbehaving vehicles with very low delays. Besides enhancing VANETs’ security, our proposed protocol limits the size of the revocation list to the number of the revoked vehicles. Consequently, the authentication process is more efficient, and the communication overhead is reduced. We experimentally evaluate our protocol to demonstrate that it provides a reliable solution to the scalability, efficiency and security of VANETs.

Novel Pseudonym Generation for Secured Privacy in Vehicular Adhoc Networks

Intelligent Transport Communication (ITC) has gained popularity in the present day scenario, where communication in vehicle is possible and it can be between Vehicle to Vehicle or Vehicle to Infrastructure. Security is one of the important issue in Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETS) and some of the main features of security are Privacy, Confidentiality, Integrity, Authentication and Non-repudiation. In the present scenario privacy along with security is considered to be one of the important factor, since the malicious nodes can attack the vehicles at any point of time during communication. Thus , Secured Privacy in Vehicular Adhoc Networks by Generating Efficient Pseudonym based on Weil Pair Algorithm (SPGPWP), is developed to address secured privacy in VANET’s . In the proposed algorithm, communication between vehicles are provided by using pseudonyms generated by road side units with the help of main authority. Our SPGPWP also includes that the pseudonyms received by vehicles from road side units are modified within the vehicle by using Weil pairing algorithm and provides secure communication between vehicle to vehicle without revealing its original identity, thus making the communication anonymous between all the vehicles except the intended vehicles. Simulation is performed to test the performance parameters such as latency, encryption, decryption time, and total time for communication. These performance parameters are compared with RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman).

VPPCS: VANET-Based Privacy-Preserving Communication Scheme

Over the past years, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have been commonly used in intelligent traffic systems. VANET's design encompasses critical features that include autonomy, distributed networking, and rapidly changing topology. The characteristics of VANET and its implementations for road safety have attracted considerable industry and academia interest, particularly in research involving transport systems enhancement that could potentially save lives. Message broadcasting in an open access system, such as VANET, is the main and utmost challenging problem with regard to security and privacy in VANETs. Various studies on VANET security and privacy have been proposed. Nevertheless, none has considered overall privacy requirements such as unobservability. In order to address these shortcomings, we propose a VANET based privacy-preserving communication scheme (VPPCS), which meets the requirements for content and contextual privacy. It leverages elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and an identity-based encryption scheme. We have carried out a detailed security analysis (burrows-abadi-needham (BAN) logic, random oracle model, security of proof, and security attributes) to validate and verify the proposed scheme. The analysis has shown that our scheme is secure and also shown to be effective in a performance evaluation. The proposed scheme does not only meet the previously mentioned security and privacy requirements, but also impervious to various types of attacks such as replay, impersonation, modification, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Solutions to Overcome Ipv4/Ipv6 Compatibility Issues In Vehicular Adhoc Networks

Researchers found that Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) can be considered since it is the important communication protocol for internet access during driving, location privacy in Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANET). TCP/IP allows devices to interact online. A unique IP address allows each device to communicate with each other over the internet. From the desktop computers to tablets, to PS4s, to mobile phones, to cars, to airplanes, to IP enabled washers and dryers, lot of things will be connected online. It needs a lot more addresses than that are available today. IPv6 was created in the mid-’90s to make the internet grow. It is not backward compatible with IP version 4, but both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols can run simultaneously over the same wires. This requires a transition from IPv4 to IPv6 and vice-versa. The IPv6 layer is a vital issue in the field of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). The vehicles possess heterogeneous devices like sensors, Global Positioning System (GPS), IPv4 addressing and IPv6 addressing. IPv4 addresses are depleting and IPv6 addressing came into existence. When the Road Side Unit (RSU) communicate with gateway and with vehicular cloud using IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, compatibility issues occur. This paper mainly focuses on the IPv4/IPv6 compatibility issues and the possible solutions to overcome the compatibility issues during the dissemination of data in VANET.

Lattice-based double-authentication-preventing ring signature for security and privacy in vehicular Ad-Hoc networks

Amidst the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), Vehicular Ad-Hoc NETwork (VANET), a typical IoT application, are bringing an ever-larger number of intelligent and convenient services to the daily lives of individuals. However, there remain challenges for VANETs in preserving privacy and security. In this paper, we propose the first lattice-based Double-Authentication-Preventing Ring Signature (DAPRS) and adopt it to propose a novel privacy-preserving authentication scheme for VANETs, offering the potential for security against quantum computers. The new construction is proven secure against chosen message attacks. Our scheme is more efficient than other ring signature in terms of the time cost of the message signing phase and verification phase, and also in terms of signature length. Analyses of security and efficiency demonstrate that our proposed scheme is provably secure and efficient in the application.

SASMF: Socially Aware Security Message Forwarding Mechanism in VANETs

With the development of vehicle communication technologies, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) through short distance communication technology achieve communication in Vehicle to Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular to Infrastructure (V2I), which provides the basis for the implementation of application. However, the privacy and security of vehicle and message forwarding are vulnerably attacked by attacker due to the dynamic network topology. To address the problems, a Socially Aware Security Message Forwarding Mechanism (SASMF) based on trust assessment is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the pseudonym is used to protect the privacy of the vehicles, and the exchange entropy is as a measure to evaluate the exchange conditions of the pseudonym to avoid the continuous tracking of the vehicle by the attacker. Furthermore, according to the trust gradient, the message is forwarded in the form of multiple pieces of information to several relay vehicles and to the Application Provider (AP) through the Road Side Units (RSUs). Results show that the proposed mechanism can effectively improve the success rate of message forwarding and reduce the risk of message leakage and better protect the privacy of VANETs.

RIN: A dynamic pseudonym change system for privacy in VANET

SummaryWe propose in this paper a security protocol based on a dynamic change of pseudonym for privacy and anonymity in Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANET). Our proposal ensures privacy for the driver and his vehicle whether he is the transmitter or receiver of the message. By handling all possible cases of changes in vehicles behavior during traffic, we ensure a safe and secure traffic management. We built the architecture of our solution on three essential entities designed for VANET: a trusted authority, a Road Side Unit, and vehicles. Our pseudonym change system ensures anonymity at any time, anywhere, with any speed of a vehicle, in all directions of a vehicle, in any environment (highway or urban), with any traffic density, independently of neighboring vehicles, and changes in vehicles behavior. In three steps, anonymity, integrity, and confidentiality are guaranteed by our RIN (Real Initial New) protocol. Our protocol blocks attacks as DOS and Sybil. Results obtained by the simulations show the efficiency of our solution. Compared with other relevant approaches from the literature, the results confirm the credibility of our protocol regarding to the privacy assurance in VANET.

A RSU-aided distributed trust framework for pseudonym-enabled privacy preservation in VANETs

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have the potential to change the way of people drive, travel and so on, in which vehicle can broadcast and forward the message of road condition or emergency. When the received messages are unreliable, they may lead the vehicles to make wrong decisions. To assess how trustworthy the messages are, every vehicle holds the reputation value in the trust-based schemes. In pseudonym-based schemes, vehicles change their pseudonyms by some kind of manner to confuse the trackers. However, the reputation value provides an additional clue to track vehicle when it and the pseudonym change asynchronously. To reconcile the conflict of privacy preservation and reputation evaluation, we propose a distributed trust framework for pseudonym-enabled privacy preservation in VANETs. In this framework, the road side unit assigns the reputation label certificate (RLC) to evaluate the reliability of message for every vehicle in its communication range. To preserve the privacy, the RLC manifests two trust statuses to replace the specific reputation value. All the reputation values of vehicles are stored in the centrical database. To encourage vehicle to follow the rules, the reputation update algorithm is designed with different weights, which achieve the reputation value increasing slowly and decreasing quickly. When RLC of vehicle is revoked, its security and privacy will not be protected. Finally, theoretical analysis and simulations show that our scheme can efficiently meet the requirements of security and privacy in VANETs.

Sybil attack resistant location privacy in VANET

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.