"On the Road" - Reflections on the Security of Vehicular Communication Systems

Vehicular communication (VC) systems have recently drawn the attention of industry, authorities, and academia. A consensus on the need to secure VC systems and protect the privacy of their users led to concerted efforts to design security architectures. Interestingly, the results different project contributed thus far bear extensive similarities in terms of objectives and mechanisms. As a result, this appears to be an auspicious time for setting the corner-stone of trustworthy VC systems. Nonetheless, there is a considerable distance to cover till their deployment. This paper ponders on the road ahead. First, it presents a distillation of the state of the art, covering the perceived threat model, security requirements, and basic secure VC system components. Then, it dissects predominant assumptions and design choices and considers alternatives. Under the prism of what is necessary to render secure VC systems practical, and given possible non-technical influences, the paper attempts to chart the landscape towards the deployment of secure VC systems

Data-centric Misbehavior Detection in VANETs

Detecting misbehavior (such as transmissions of false information) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is very important problem with wide range of implications including safety related and congestion avoidance applications. We discuss several limitations of existing misbehavior detection schemes (MDS) designed for VANETs. Most MDS are concerned with detection of malicious nodes. In most situations, vehicles would send wrong information because of selfish reasons of their owners, e.g. for gaining access to a particular lane. Because of this (\emph{rational behavior}), it is more important to detect false information than to identify misbehaving nodes. We introduce the concept of data-centric misbehavior detection and propose algorithms which detect false alert messages and misbehaving nodes by observing their actions after sending out the alert messages. With the data-centric MDS, each node can independently decide whether an information received is correct or false. The decision is based on the consistency of recent messages and new alert with reported and estimated vehicle positions. No voting or majority decisions is needed, making our MDS resilient to Sybil attacks. Instead of revoking all the secret credentials of misbehaving nodes, as done in most schemes, we impose fines on misbehaving nodes (administered by the certification authority), discouraging them to act selfishly. This reduces the computation and communication costs involved in revoking all the secret credentials of misbehaving nodes.Comment: 12 page

T-VNets: a novel Trust architecture for Vehicular Networks using the standardized messaging services of ETSI ITS

In this paper we propose a novel trust establishment architecture fully compliant with the ETSI ITS standard which takes advantage of the periodically exchanged beacons (i.e. CAM) and event triggered messages (i.e. DENM). Our solution, called T-VNets, allows estimating the traffic density, the trust among entities, as well as the dishonest nodes distribution within the network. In addition, by combining different trust metrics such as direct, indirect, event-based and RSU-based trust, T-VNets is able to eliminate dishonest nodes from all network operations while selecting the best paths to deliver legal data messages by taking advantage of the link duration concept. Since our solution is able to adapt to environments with or without roadside units (RSUs), it can perform adequately both in urban and highway scenarios. Simulation results evidence that our proposal is more efficient than other existing solutions, being able to sustain performance levels even in worst-case scenarios. © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.VThis work was partially supported by both the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Programa Estatal de Investigacion, Desarrollo e Innovacion Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad, Proyectos I+D+I 2014, Spain, under Grant TEC2014-52690-R, and the Ministere de l'enseignement superieur et de la recherche scientifique, Programme National Exceptionnel P.N.E 2015/2016, Algeria.Kerrache, CA.; Lagraa, N.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Manzoni, P. (2016). T-VNets: a novel Trust architecture for Vehicular Networks using the standardized messaging services of ETSI ITS. Computer Communications. 93:68-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2016.05.013S68839

TFDD: A trust-based framework for reliable data delivery and DoS defense in VANETs

[EN] A trust establishment scheme for enhancing inter-vehicular communication and preventing DoS attacks `TFDD¿ is proposed in this paper. Based on a developed intrusion detection module (IDM) and data centric verification, our framework allows preventing DDoS attacks and eliminating misbehaving nodes in a distributed, collaborative and instantaneous manner. In addition, a trusted routing protocol is proposed that, using context-based information such as link stability and trust information, delivers data through the most reliable way. In this study, the simulation results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of our trust framework at detecting dishonest nodes, as well as malicious messages that are sent by honest or dishonest nodes, after a very low number of message exchanges. Furthermore, colluding attacks are detected in a small period of time, which results in network resources being released immediately after an overload period. We also show that, in a worst-case scenario, our trust-based framework is able to sustain performance levels, and outperforming existing solutions such as T-CLAIDS and AECFV.Kerrache, CA.; Lagraa, N.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Lakas, A. (2017). TFDD: A trust-based framework for reliable data delivery and DoS defense in VANETs. Vehicular Communications. 9:254-267. doi:10.1016/j.vehcom.2016.11.010S254267

A WIDE RANGE OF CELLULAR INFRASTRUCTURE TO ALLEVIATE TRAFFIC CONGESTION

The primary reason for would be to alleviate traffic jam that exists in each and every major city. Growing Smartphone transmission, combined with wide coverage of cellular infrastructures, renders smartphonebased traffic human resources (TISs) a beautiful option. Nonetheless, to make use of Smartphone-based TISs, we have to ensure their privacy and security as well as their effectiveness (e.g., precision). We present an extensive solution for Smartphone-based traffic estimation that is known as secure and privacy preserving. This is actually the motivation of the paper: We leverage condition-of-the-art cryptographic schemes and easily available telecommunication infrastructure. Our results make sure Smartphone-based TISs can provide accurate traffic condition estimation while being secure and privacy preserving. We offer a complete-blown implementation on actual smart phones, with an extensive assessment of their precision and efficiency. The identity from the system is encrypted having a symmetric key recognized to the ID proxy. Similarly, the place details are encrypted using the public key from the traffic server thus, it's accessible only because of it

SECURE AND PRIVACY PRESERVING SMARTPHONE BASED TRAFFIC INFORMATION SYSTEM

The main reason for such systems would be to alleviate traffic congestion that is available in each and every major city. This project is for solving the problem by collecting traffic data, producing traffic estimates, and providing drivers with location-specific information. The Present methods designed for getting the present location through GPS. But no possibility of route map to other place from present place. Moving to desired place has become difficulty to the driver and also the traffic density in that route. The proposed method using the smart phone based traffic information system. Here TIS information is collected based on the IR Sensors that are connected with each other based on the distance which make us to know the information that number of vehicles moving on road with that information we can change the direction of route based on the number vehicles moving. This task that can’t be accomplished only by depending around the security from the mobile-to-cellular infrastructure communication. But also as TISs require fine-grained location information, the privacy from the adding participants must be protected. We have to ensure their security and privacy as well as their effectiveness (e.g., precision). This paper used the condition of the available facilities like Road maps, path ways and available telecommunication infrastructure. Growing smart phone transmission combined with the wide coverage of cellular infrastructures, renders smart phone based traffic human resources (TISs)  this is an extensive solution for smart phone-based traffic estimation that is known as secure and privacy protecting. We provide a complete-blown implementation on actual smart phones, along with a comprehensive assessment of their precision and efficiency. Our results make sure smart phone-based TISs can provide accurate traffic condition estimation while being secure and privacy protecting

Reputation systems and secure communication in vehicular networks

A thorough review of the state of the art will reveal that most VANET applications rely on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which uses user certificates managed by a Certification Authority (CA) to handle security. By doing so, they constrain the ad-hoc nature of the VANET imposing a frequent connection to the CA to retrieve the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) and requiring some degree of roadside infrastructure to achieve that connection. Other solutions propose the usage of group signatures where users organize in groups and elect a group manager. The group manager will need to ensure that group members do not misbehave, i.e., do not spread false information, and if they do punish them, evict them from the group and report them to the CA; thus suffering from the same CRL retrieval problem. In this thesis we present a fourfold contribution to improve security in VANETs. First and foremost, Chains of Trust describes a reputation system where users disseminate Points of Interest (POIs) information over the network while their privacy remains protected. It uses asymmetric cryptography and users are responsible for the generation of their own pair of public and private keys. There is no central entity which stores the information users input into the system; instead, that information is kept distributed among the vehicles that make up the network. On top of that, this system requires no roadside infrastructure. Precisely, our main objective with Chains of Trust was to show that just by relying on people¿s driving habits and the sporadic nature of their encounters with other drivers a successful reputation system could be built. The second contribution of this thesis is the application simulator poiSim. Many¿s the time a new VANET application is presented and its authors back their findings using simulation results from renowned networks simulators like ns-2. The major issue with network simulators is that they were not designed with that purpose in mind and handling simulations with hundreds of nodes requires a massive processing power. As a result, authors run small simulations (between 50 and 100 nodes) with vehicles that move randomly in a squared area instead of using real maps, which rend unrealistic results. We show that by building tailored application simulators we can obtain more realistic results. The application simulator poiSim processes a realistic mobility trace produced by a Multi-agent Microscopic Traffic Simulator developed at ETH Zurich, which accurately describes the mobility patterns of 259,977 vehicles over regional maps of Switzerland for 24 hours. This simulation runs on a desktop PC and lasts approximately 120 minutes. In our third contribution we took Chains of Trust one step further in the protection of user privacy to develop Anonymous Chains of Trust. In this system users can temporarily exchange their identity with other users they trust, thus making it impossible for an attacker to know in all certainty who input a particular piece of information into the system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this technique has been used in a reputation system. Finally, in our last contribution we explore a different form of communication for VANETs. The vast majority of VANET applications rely on the IEEE 802.11p/Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) standard or some other form of radio communication. This poses a security risk if we consider how vulnerable radio transmission is to intentional jamming and natural interferences: an attacker could easily block all radio communication in a certain area if his transmitter is powerful enough. Visual Light Communication (VLC), on the other hand, is resilient to jamming over a wide area because it relies on visible light to transmit information and ,unlike WAVE, it has no scalability problems. In this thesis we show that VLC is a secure and valuable form of communication in VANETs