BlockChain: A distributed solution to automotive security and privacy

Interconnected smart vehicles offer a range of sophisticated services that benefit the vehicle owners, transport authorities, car manufacturers and other service providers. This potentially exposes smart vehicles to a range of security and privacy threats such as location tracking or remote hijacking of the vehicle. In this article, we argue that BlockChain (BC), a disruptive technology that has found many applications from cryptocurrencies to smart contracts, is a potential solution to these challenges. We propose a BC-based architecture to protect the privacy of the users and to increase the security of the vehicular ecosystem. Wireless remote software updates and other emerging services such as dynamic vehicle insurance fees, are used to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed security architecture. We also qualitatively argue the resilience of the architecture against common security attacks

Privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) for connected vehicles in smart cities

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Wiley in Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, available online: https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.4173 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Many Experts believe that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a new revolution in technology that has brought many benefits for our organizations, businesses, and industries. However, information security and privacy protection are important challenges particularly for smart vehicles in smart cities that have attracted the attention of experts in this domain. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) endeavor to mitigate the risk of privacy invasions, but the literature lacks a thorough review of the approaches and techniques that support individuals' privacy in the connection between smart vehicles and smart cities. This gap has stimulated us to conduct this research with the main goal of reviewing recent privacy-enhancing technologies, approaches, taxonomy, challenges, and solutions on the application of PETs for smart vehicles in smart cities. The significant aspect of this study originates from the inclusion of data-oriented and process-oriented privacy protection. This research also identifies limitations of existing PETs, complementary technologies, and potential research directions.Published onlin

Communication and Cyber Security issues in Smart Grid

Smart Grid is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enabled Power grid. It is efficient, secure, reliable and self-healing power grid. Integration of micro grids, electric vehicles and other utilities make it more interesting. The deregulation of electricity sector has necessitated the use of many advanced software and embedded technologies to handle the size and complexity of power network. Smart grid needs to be supported by efficient and secure communication architecture design and implementation. At the same time it is necessary to ensure the security and privacy of data and information moving or stored in the smart grid system to have near 100% uptime of the power grid. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the various communication and cyber security issues involved with the successful operation of Smart Grid

Secure data sharing and analysis in cloud-based energy management systems

Analysing data acquired from one or more buildings (through specialist sensors, energy generation capability such as PV panels or smart meters) via a cloud-based Local Energy Management System (LEMS) is increasingly gaining in popularity. In a LEMS, various smart devices within a building are monitored and/or controlled to either investigate energy usage trends within a building, or to investigate mechanisms to reduce total energy demand. However, whenever we are connecting externally monitored/controlled smart devices there are security and privacy concerns. We describe the architecture and components of a LEMS and provide a survey of security and privacy concerns associated with data acquisition and control within a LEMS. Our scenarios specifically focus on the integration of Electric Vehicles (EV) and Energy Storage Units (ESU) at the building premises, to identify how EVs/ESUs can be used to store energy and reduce the electricity costs of the building. We review security strategies and identify potential security attacks that could be carried out on such a system, while exploring vulnerable points in the system. Additionally, we will systematically categorize each vulnerability and look at potential attacks exploiting that vulnerability for LEMS. Finally, we will evaluate current counter measures used against these attacks and suggest possible mitigation strategies

Vehicle as a Service (VaaS): Leverage Vehicles to Build Service Networks and Capabilities for Smart Cities

Smart cities demand resources for rich immersive sensing, ubiquitous communications, powerful computing, large storage, and high intelligence (SCCSI) to support various kinds of applications, such as public safety, connected and autonomous driving, smart and connected health, and smart living. At the same time, it is widely recognized that vehicles such as autonomous cars, equipped with significantly powerful SCCSI capabilities, will become ubiquitous in future smart cities. By observing the convergence of these two trends, this article advocates the use of vehicles to build a cost-effective service network, called the Vehicle as a Service (VaaS) paradigm, where vehicles empowered with SCCSI capability form a web of mobile servers and communicators to provide SCCSI services in smart cities. Towards this direction, we first examine the potential use cases in smart cities and possible upgrades required for the transition from traditional vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to VaaS. Then, we will introduce the system architecture of the VaaS paradigm and discuss how it can provide SCCSI services in future smart cities, respectively. At last, we identify the open problems of this paradigm and future research directions, including architectural design, service provisioning, incentive design, and security & privacy. We expect that this paper paves the way towards developing a cost-effective and sustainable approach for building smart cities.Comment: 32 pages, 11 figure

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

Security issues and defences for Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at linking billions of devices using the internet and other heterogeneous networks to share information. However, the issues of security in IoT environments are more challenging than with ordinary Internet. A vast number of devices are exposed to the attackers, and some of those devices contain sensitive personal and confidential data. For example, the sensitive flows of data such as autonomous vehicles, patient life support devices, traffic data in smart cities are extremely concerned by researchers from the security field. The IoT architecture needs to handle security and privacy requirements such as provision of authentication, access control, privacy and confidentiality. This thesis presents the architecture of IoT and its security issues. Additionally, we introduce the concept of blockchain technology, and the role of blockchain in different security aspects of IoT is discussed through a literature review. In case study of Mirai, we explain how snort and iptables based approach can be used to prevent IoT botnet from finding IoT devices by port scanning