A Blockchain Based Certificate Revocation Scheme For Vehicular Communication Systems

Both the academy and industry believe that Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) would be achievable in one decade since modern vehicle and communication technologies advanced apace. Vehicular Communication System (VCS) introduces information technology to the ITS and aims to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. In recent year, security and privacy schemes in VCS are becoming important. However, recovery mechanisms to eliminate the negative effect of security and privacy attacks are still an important topic for research. Therefore, the certificate revocation scheme is considered as a feasible technique to prevent the system from potential attacks. The major challenge of the certificate revocation scheme is to achieve low-cost operation since the communication resources must be capable of carrying various applications apart from the security and privacy purposes. In this paper, we propose an efficient certificate revocation scheme in VCS. The Blockchain concept is introduced to simplify the network structure and distributed maintenance of the Certificate Revocation List (CRL). The proposed scheme embeds part of the certificate revocation functions within the security and privacy applications, aiming to reduce the communication overhead and shorten the processing time cost. Extensive simulations and analysis show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme, in which the Blockchain structure costs fewer network resources and gives a more economic solution to against further cybercrime attacks

A transparent distributed ledger-based certificate revocation scheme for VANETs

The widespread adoption of Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Mobility (CCAM) applications requires the implementation of stringent security mechanisms to minimize the surface of cyber attacks. Authentication is an effective process for validating user identity in vehicular networks. However, authentication alone is not enough to prevent dangerous attack situations. Existing security mechanisms are not able to promptly revoke the credentials of misbehaving vehicles, thus tolerate malicious actors to remain trusted in the system for a long time. The resulting vulnerability window allows the implementation of complex attacks, thus posing a substantial impairment to the security of the vehicular ecosystem. In this paper we propose a Distributed Ledger-based Vehicular Revocation Scheme that improves the state of the art by providing a vulnerability window lower than 1 s, reducing well-behaved vehicles exposure to sophisticated and potentially dangerous attacks. The proposed scheme harnesses the advantages of the underlying Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to implement a privacy-aware revocation process while being fully transparent to all participating entities. Furthermore, it meets the critical message processing times defined by EU and US standards, thus closing a critical gap in the current international standards. Theoretical analysis and experimental validation demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme, where DLT streamlines the revocation operation overhead and delivers an economically viable yet scalable solution against cyber attacks on vehicular systems

Towards Cyber Security for Low-Carbon Transportation: Overview, Challenges and Future Directions

In recent years, low-carbon transportation has become an indispensable part as sustainable development strategies of various countries, and plays a very important responsibility in promoting low-carbon cities. However, the security of low-carbon transportation has been threatened from various ways. For example, denial of service attacks pose a great threat to the electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid networks. To minimize these threats, several methods have been proposed to defense against them. Yet, these methods are only for certain types of scenarios or attacks. Therefore, this review addresses security aspect from holistic view, provides the overview, challenges and future directions of cyber security technologies in low-carbon transportation. Firstly, based on the concept and importance of low-carbon transportation, this review positions the low-carbon transportation services. Then, with the perspective of network architecture and communication mode, this review classifies its typical attack risks. The corresponding defense technologies and relevant security suggestions are further reviewed from perspective of data security, network management security and network application security. Finally, in view of the long term development of low-carbon transportation, future research directions have been concerned.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, accepted by journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Review

A Review of Research on Privacy Protection of Internet of Vehicles Based on Blockchain

Numerous academic and industrial fields, such as healthcare, banking, and supply chain management, are rapidly adopting and relying on blockchain technology. It has also been suggested for application in the internet of vehicles (IoV) ecosystem as a way to improve service availability and reliability. Blockchain offers decentralized, distributed and tamper-proof solutions that bring innovation to data sharing and management, but do not themselves protect privacy and data confidentiality. Therefore, solutions using blockchain technology must take user privacy concerns into account. This article reviews the proposed solutions that use blockchain technology to provide different vehicle services while overcoming the privacy leakage problem which inherently exists in blockchain and vehicle services. We analyze the key features and attributes of prior schemes and identify their contributions to provide a comprehensive and critical overview. In addition, we highlight prospective future research topics and present research problems

Secure Identity Management Framework for Vehicular Ad-hoc Network using Blockchain

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is a mobile network formed by vehicles, roadside units, and other infrastructures that enable communication between the nodes to improve road safety and traffic control. While this technology promises great benefits to drivers, it has many security concerns that are critical to road safety. It is essential to ensure that only authenticated vehicles transmit data and revoked vehicles do not interfere in this communication. Many current VANET technologies also depend on a central trusted authority that can cost computation and communication overhead and be a single point of failure for the network. By using blockchain technology in VANET, we can take advantage of the decentralized and distributed framework and thereby avoid a single point of trust. Moreover, blockchain technology ensures the immutability of the data strengthening the integrity of the system. In the proposed framework, Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned blockchain technology, is used for identity management in VANET. All the vehicles with their pseudo IDs are registered, validated, and revoked using the blockchain technology. The vehicles in the network check the validity of the safety messages received from the neighboring nodes, using the services provided by the road side units that have access to the blockchain. This framework works on looking-up the pseudo IDs and public keys on the blockchain for their validity, thus promising a light-weight authentication and reduced computation and communication overhead for vehicles to access the safety messages in the network

Security aspects of communications in VANETs

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has begun and it promises breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence, robotics, Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Digital Twin, and many other technologies that tackle advancements in the industries. The trend is headed towards automation and connectivity. In the automotive industry, advancements have been made towards integrating autonomous driving vehicles into Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) with the use of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). The purpose of this type of network is to enable efficient communication between vehicles (V2V communication) or vehicles and infrastructure (V2I communication), to improve driving safety, to avoid traffic congestion, and to better coordinate transport networks. This direction towards limited (or lack of) human intervention implies vulnerability to cyber attacks. In this context, this paper provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: 1) privacy, 2) authentication and 3) message integrity within VANETs. Discussions, challenges and open issues faced by the current and next generation of vehicular networks are also provided

Vehicle Authentication in Vehicular Ad-hoc Network using RSU Based Approach

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is a pervasive network where vehicles communicate with nearby vehicles and infrastructure nodes, such as Road-side unit (RSU). VANET is the subclass of Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) in which nodes move randomly and are connected wirelessly. Information sharing among vehicles is an essential component of an intelligent traffic system (ITS), but security and privacy concerns must be taken into consideration. Security of the network can be improved by granting access only to authenticated vehicles. This research proposes an RSU based approach to authenticate vehicles and notify vehicles about unauthorized messages/vehicles. It helps in preventing other vehicles in the network from being influenced by the malicious vehicle. In this approach, Blockchain has been used to securely maintain the identity of all vehicles in the network. The use of this RSU based approach helps to reduce the computational overhead on the On-board unit (OBU) of individual vehicles and reduces the processing delay

Blockchain Application on the Internet of Vehicles (IoV)

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its potential integration with the traditional Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs), we have witnessed the emergence of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), which promises to seamlessly integrate into smart transportation systems. However, the key characteristics of IoV, such as high-speed mobility and frequent disconnections make it difficult to manage its security and privacy. The Blockchain, as a distributed tamper-resistant ledge, has been proposed as an innovative solution that guarantees privacy-preserving yet secure schemes. In this paper, we review recent literature on the application of blockchain to IoV, in particular, and intelligent transportation systems in general

Efficient blockchain-based group key distribution for secure authentication in VANETs

This paper proposes a group key distribution scheme using smart contract-based blockchain technology. The smart contract’s functions allow for securely distributing the group session key, following the initial legitimacy detection using public key infrastructure-based authentication. For message authentication, we propose a lightweight symmetric key cryptography-based group signature method, supporting the security and privacy requirements of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Our discussion examined the scheme’s robustness against typical adversarial attacks. To evaluate the gas costs associated with smart contract’s functions, we implemented it on the Ethereum main network. Finally, comprehensive analyses of computation and communication costs demonstrate the scheme’s effectiveness