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

Secure Communication in Vehicular Networks - PRESERVE Demo

Security and privacy are fundamental prerequisites for the deployment of vehicular communications. The near-deployment status of Safety Applications for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) calls for strong evidence on the applicability of proposed research solutions, notably close-to-reality situations and field-operational trials. The contribution of our work is in this direction: We present a demonstration of the integration and the interoperability among components and security mechanisms coming from different Research and Development projects, as per the PRESERVE project. In fact, we show that the components of the SeVeCom and EVITA projects with the PRESERVE architecture lead to strong and practical security and privacy solutions for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs)

A Bandwidth Sharing Approach to Improve Licensed Spectrum Utilization

The spectrum of deployed wireless cellular communication systems is found to be underutilized, even though licensed spectrum is at a premium. To efficiently utilize the bandwidth left unused in a cellular system, the primary system (PRI), we propose an overlaid ad hoc secondary network (ASN) architecture, with the ASN operating over the resources left unutilized by the PRI. Our basic design principle is that the ASNoperates in a nonintrusive manner and does not interact with the PRI. In this article we present the ad hoc secondary medium access control (AS-MAC) protocol to enable PRI-SEC interoperation, address a number of technical challenges pertinent to this networking environment, and evaluate the performance of the AS-MAC. In a single-hop ASN the AS-MAC transparently utilizes 75 percent of the bandwidth left unused by the PRI, while in multihop ASNs, due to spatial reuse, the AS-MAC can utilize up to 132 percent of the idle PRI resources in our experiments

HERMES: Scalable, Secure, and Privacy-Enhancing Vehicle Access System

We propose HERMES, a scalable, secure, and privacy-enhancing system for users to share and access vehicles. HERMES securely outsources operations of vehicle access token generation to a set of untrusted servers. It builds on an earlier proposal, namely SePCAR [1], and extends the system design for improved efficiency and scalability. To cater to system and user needs for secure and private computations, HERMES utilizes and combines several cryptographic primitives with secure multiparty computation efficiently. It conceals secret keys of vehicles and transaction details from the servers, including vehicle booking details, access token information, and user and vehicle identities. It also provides user accountability in case of disputes. Besides, we provide semantic security analysis and prove that HERMES meets its security and privacy requirements. Last but not least, we demonstrate that HERMES is efficient and, in contrast to SePCAR, scales to a large number of users and vehicles, making it practical for real-world deployments. We build our evaluations with two different multiparty computation protocols: HtMAC-MiMC and CBC-MAC-AES. Our results demonstrate that HERMES with HtMAC-MiMC requires only approx 1,83 ms for generating an access token for a single-vehicle owner and approx 11,9 ms for a large branch of rental companies with over a thousand vehicles. It handles 546 and 84 access token generations per second, respectively. This results in HERMES being 696 (with HtMAC-MiMC) and 42 (with CBC-MAC-AES) times faster compared to in SePCAR for a single-vehicle owner access token generation. Furthermore, we show that HERMES is practical on the vehicle side, too, as access token operations performed on a prototype vehicle on-board unit take only approx 62,087 ms

Carbon Nanotube Dry Spinnable Sheets for Solar Selective Coatings by Lamination

Carbon nanotube, oriented free standing sheets can be laminated on any surface as selective solar absorbers while simultaneously dry spun in a highly controlled process from vertically oriented forests grown by CVD. We have found that properties of a CNT forest strongly correlate with the optical transparency and reflectivity of CNT sheets required for solar selective coatings and can be properly tuned for optimal coatings for solar collectors. We study absorptive and emissive properties of CNT sheets that are laminated by a simple automated and controlled process, developed for coating of cylindrical glass tubes for evacuated solar collectors (ETC). The advantages of Joule heating of CNT coatings are demonstrated and test results described, showing a unique property of fast heating as compared to slow heating in conventional solar water heaters

An Intelligent Transportation System Application for Smartphones Based on Vehicle Position Advertising and Route Sharing in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

[EN] Alerting drivers about incoming emergency vehicles and their routes can greatly improve their travel times in congested cities, while reducing the risk of accidents due to distractions. This paper contributes to this goal by proposing Messiah, an Android application capable of informing regular vehicles about incoming emergency vehicles like ambulances, police cars and fire brigades. This is made possible by creating a network of vehicles capable of directly communicating between them. The user can, therefore, take driving decisions in a timely manner by considering incoming alerts. Using the support of our GRCBox hardware, the application can rely on vehicular ad-hoc network communications in the 5 GHz band, being V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communication provided through a combination of Android-based smartphone and our GRCBox device. The application was tested in three different scenarios with different levels of obstruction, showing that it is capable of providing alerts up to 300 meters, and notifying vehicles within less than one secondThis work was partially supported by the "Ministerio de Economia y Competividad, Programa Estatal de Investigacion, Desarollo e Innovacion Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad, Proyectos I+D+I 2014", Spain, under Grant Nos. TEC2014-52690-R and BES-2015-075988.Hadiwardoyo, SA.; Patra, S.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano, J.; Manzoni, P. (2018). An Intelligent Transportation System Application for Smartphones Based on Vehicle Position Advertising and Route Sharing in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks. Journal of Computer Science and Technology. 33(2):249-262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-018-1817-4S249262332Papadimitratos P, De La Fortelle A, Evenssen K, Brignolo R, Cosenza S. 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A bandwidth sharing approach to improve licensed spectrum utilization

Abstract- The spectrum of deployed wireless cellular communication systems is found to be under-utilized, even though licensed spectrum is at a premium. To efficiently utilize the bandwidth left unused in a cellular system, which we denote as the primary system (PRI), we design a system with an ad hoc overlay network, which we denote as the secondary system (SEC). The basic design principle is that the SEC operates in a nonintrusive manner and does not interact with the PRI. We develop the AS-MAC, an Ad hoc SEC Medium Access Control protocol to enable the interoperation of the PRI-SEC system. We address a number of technical challenges pertinent to this networking environment, and evaluate AS-MAC. Our performance evaluation results show that, in a single-hop ASN, the AS-MAC transparently utilizes 75 % of the bandwidth left unused by the PRI, while, in multi-hop ASNs, due to spatial reuse, the AS-MAC can utilize up to 180 % of the idle PRI resources. I