Towards Secure Blockchain-enabled Internet of Vehicles: Optimizing Consensus Management Using Reputation and Contract Theory

In Internet of Vehicles (IoV), data sharing among vehicles is essential to improve driving safety and enhance vehicular services. To ensure data sharing security and traceability, highefficiency Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus scheme as a hard security solution is utilized to establish blockchain-enabled IoV (BIoV). However, as miners are selected from miner candidates by stake-based voting, it is difficult to defend against voting collusion between the candidates and compromised high-stake vehicles, which introduces serious security challenges to the BIoV. To address such challenges, we propose a soft security enhancement solution including two stages: (i) miner selection and (ii) block verification. In the first stage, a reputation-based voting scheme for the blockchain is proposed to ensure secure miner selection. This scheme evaluates candidates' reputation by using both historical interactions and recommended opinions from other vehicles. The candidates with high reputation are selected to be active miners and standby miners. In the second stage, to prevent internal collusion among the active miners, a newly generated block is further verified and audited by the standby miners. To incentivize the standby miners to participate in block verification, we formulate interactions between the active miners and the standby miners by using contract theory, which takes block verification security and delay into consideration. Numerical results based on a real-world dataset indicate that our schemes are secure and efficient for data sharing in BIoV.Comment: 12 pages, submitted for possible journal publicatio

A Blockchain-Based Multi-Factor Authentication Model for a Cloud-Enabled Internet of Vehicles.

Continuous and emerging advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have enabled Internet-of-Things (IoT)-to-Cloud applications to be induced by data pipelines and Edge Intelligence-based architectures. Advanced vehicular networks greatly benefit from these architectures due to the implicit functionalities that are focused on realizing the Internet of Vehicle (IoV) vision. However, IoV is susceptible to attacks, where adversaries can easily exploit existing vulnerabilities. Several attacks may succeed due to inadequate or ineffective authentication techniques. Hence, there is a timely need for hardening the authentication process through cutting-edge access control mechanisms. This paper proposes a Blockchain-based Multi-Factor authentication model that uses an embedded Digital Signature (MFBC_eDS) for vehicular clouds and Cloud-enabled IoV. Our proposed MFBC_eDS model consists of a scheme that integrates the Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML) to the Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities for a connected edge to cloud ecosystem. MFBC_eDS draws an essential comparison with the baseline authentication scheme suggested by Karla and Sood. Based on the foundations of Karla and Sood's scheme, an embedded Probabilistic Polynomial-Time Algorithm (ePPTA) and an additional Hash function for the Pi generated during Karla and Sood's authentication were proposed and discussed. The preliminary analysis of the proposition shows that the approach is more suitable to counter major adversarial attacks in an IoV-centered environment based on the Dolev-Yao adversarial model while satisfying aspects of the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) triad

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

ESP2CS: Securing Internet of Vehicles through Blockchain-enabled Communications and Payments

The burgeoning domain of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT), promises to revolutionize transportation through enhanced safety, efficiency, and environmental sustainability. By amalgamating technologies like sensors and cloud computing, the IoV paves the way for optimized traffic management, heightened vehicle safety, and the birth of novel business paradigms. However, this growth is shadowed by significant security concerns, especially in the communication and payment sectors. Addressing the pressing need for secure Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communications and payments amidst rising cyber threats, this research introduces the Ethereum based Secure Payment and Communication Solution (ESP2CS). Utilizing Ethereum as a middleware, ESP2CS ensures robust and secure V2X interactions. The solution is complemented by an Android Auto application for vehicles, streamlining inter vehicle communication, parking space detection, and transaction management. Furthermore, dedicated Android applications are developed for parking space renters and the parking IoT system. Preliminary evaluations underscore ESP2CS's superior cost effectiveness, integrity and consistency over contemporary solutions, with Ethereum bolstering both security and efficiency.Comment: The first GCC Engineering Symposium, GCCENG23, 202

ESIA: An Efficient and Stable Identity Authentication for Internet of Vehicles

Decentralized, tamper-proof blockchain is regarded as a solution to a challenging authentication issue in the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs). However, the consensus time and communication overhead of blockchain increase significantly as the number of vehicles connected to the blockchain. To address this issue, vehicular fog computing has been introduced to improve efficiency. However, existing studies ignore several key factors such as the number of vehicles in the fog computing system, which can impact the consensus communication overhead. Meanwhile, there is no comprehensive study on the stability of vehicular fog composition. The vehicle movement will lead to dynamic changes in fog. If the composition of vehicular fog is unstable, the blockchain formed by this fog computing system will be unstable, which can affect the consensus efficiency. With the above considerations, we propose an efficient and stable identity authentication (ESIA) empowered by hierarchical blockchain and fog computing. By grouping vehicles efficiently, ESIA has low communication complexity and achieves high stability. Moreover, to enhance the consensus security of the hierarchical blockchain, the consensus process is from the bottom layer to the up layer (bottom-up), which we call B2UHChain. Through theoretical analysis and simulation verification, our scheme achieves the design goals of high efficiency and stability while significantly improving the IoV scalability to the power of 1.5 (^1.5) under similar security to a single-layer blockchain. In addition, ESIA has less communication and computation overhead, lower latency, and higher throughput than other baseline authentication schemes

A Survey on Off-chain Networks: Frameworks, Technologies, Solutions and Challenges

Blockchain has received increasing attention in academia and industry. However, the increasing transaction volumes and limited on-chain storage underscore scalability as a key challenge hindering the widespread adoption of blockchain. Fortunately, off-chain networks that enable transactions outside the blockchain show promising potential to mitigate the scalability challenge. Off-chain solutions that address blockchain scalability hurdles, such as payment channel networks, facilitate secure and fast off-chain transactions, thus relieving the main chain's strain. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of key technologies, solutions, and challenges of off-chain networks. First, we introduce the background of off-chain networks encompassing design motivation, framework, overview, and application scenarios. We then review the key issues and technologies associated with off-chain networks. Subsequently, we summarize the mainstream solutions for the corresponding key issues. Finally, we discuss some research challenges and open issues in this area.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure

Integration of Blockchain and Auction Models: A Survey, Some Applications, and Challenges

In recent years, blockchain has gained widespread attention as an emerging technology for decentralization, transparency, and immutability in advancing online activities over public networks. As an essential market process, auctions have been well studied and applied in many business fields due to their efficiency and contributions to fair trade. Complementary features between blockchain and auction models trigger a great potential for research and innovation. On the one hand, the decentralized nature of blockchain can provide a trustworthy, secure, and cost-effective mechanism to manage the auction process; on the other hand, auction models can be utilized to design incentive and consensus protocols in blockchain architectures. These opportunities have attracted enormous research and innovation activities in both academia and industry; however, there is a lack of an in-depth review of existing solutions and achievements. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of these two research topics. We review the existing solutions for integrating blockchain and auction models, with some application-oriented taxonomies generated. Additionally, we highlight some open research challenges and future directions towards integrated blockchain-auction models