Emerging privacy challenges and approaches in CAV systems

The growth of Internet-connected devices, Internet-enabled services and Internet of Things systems continues at a rapid pace, and their application to transport systems is heralded as game-changing. Numerous developing CAV (Connected and Autonomous Vehicle) functions, such as traffic planning, optimisation, management, safety-critical and cooperative autonomous driving applications, rely on data from various sources. The efficacy of these functions is highly dependent on the dimensionality, amount and accuracy of the data being shared. It holds, in general, that the greater the amount of data available, the greater the efficacy of the function. However, much of this data is privacy-sensitive, including personal, commercial and research data. Location data and its correlation with identity and temporal data can help infer other personal information, such as home/work locations, age, job, behavioural features, habits, social relationships. This work categorises the emerging privacy challenges and solutions for CAV systems and identifies the knowledge gap for future research, which will minimise and mitigate privacy concerns without hampering the efficacy of the functions

Context-based Pseudonym Changing Scheme for Vehicular Adhoc Networks

Vehicular adhoc networks allow vehicles to share their information for safety and traffic efficiency. However, sharing information may threaten the driver privacy because it includes spatiotemporal information and is broadcast publicly and periodically. In this paper, we propose a context-adaptive pseudonym changing scheme which lets a vehicle decide autonomously when to change its pseudonym and how long it should remain silent to ensure unlinkability. This scheme adapts dynamically based on the density of the surrounding traffic and the user privacy preferences. We employ a multi-target tracking algorithm to measure privacy in terms of traceability in realistic vehicle traces. We use Monte Carlo analysis to estimate the quality of service (QoS) of a forward collision warning application when vehicles apply this scheme. According to the experimental results, the proposed scheme provides a better compromise between traceability and QoS than a random silent period scheme.Comment: Extended version of a previous paper "K. Emara, W. Woerndl, and J. Schlichter, "Poster: Context-Adaptive User-Centric Privacy Scheme for VANET," in Proceedings of the 11th EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm'15. Dallas, TX, USA: Springer, June 2015.

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

On the Security of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Protocol

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is the communications protocol currently being rolled out as part of next generation air transportation systems. As the heart of modern air traffic control, it will play an essential role in the protection of two billion passengers per year, besides being crucial to many other interest groups in aviation. The inherent lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has long been a topic in both the aviation circles and in the academic community. Due to recently published proof-of-concept attacks, the topic is becoming ever more pressing, especially with the deadline for mandatory implementation in most airspaces fast approaching. This survey first summarizes the attacks and problems that have been reported in relation to ADS-B security. Thereafter, it surveys both the theoretical and practical efforts which have been previously conducted concerning these issues, including possible countermeasures. In addition, the survey seeks to go beyond the current state of the art and gives a detailed assessment of security measures which have been developed more generally for related wireless networks such as sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks, including a taxonomy of all considered approaches.Comment: Survey, 22 Pages, 21 Figure

Secure Vehicular Communication Systems: Implementation, Performance, and Research Challenges

Vehicular Communication (VC) systems are on the verge of practical deployment. Nonetheless, their security and privacy protection is one of the problems that have been addressed only recently. In order to show the feasibility of secure VC, certain implementations are required. In [1] we discuss the design of a VC security system that has emerged as a result of the European SeVeCom project. In this second paper, we discuss various issues related to the implementation and deployment aspects of secure VC systems. Moreover, we provide an outlook on open security research issues that will arise as VC systems develop from today's simple prototypes to full-fledged systems