A Lightweight Authentication and Key Management for Intelligent Transport Systems

"Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) aims to reduce fatalities caused by road accidentsand improve traffic efficiency. Reducing accidents is a critical element that has contributedto drawing research attention to vehicular communication systems (VCS), inwhich vehicles can form a dynamic self-configuring network enabling them to communicatewith other vehicles and road infrastructure. Since road users make their actionsaccording to the information provided in the exchanged safety massages, received messagesshould be reliable. Since the wireless communication channel is vulnerable toattacks, an authentication scheme should be designed to meet the requirements ofsuch networks before any deployment. Due to the large scale of the mobile nodes andhigh volume of exchanged messages in VCS and before designing a security frameworkemploying lightweight cryptographic operations is necessary to maintain low computationand communication overheads. Therefore, lightweight authentication and keymanagement schemes are proposed in this thesis. In this thesis, there are three maincontributions.A Lightweight Authentication Scheme for VCS Based on Timed Efficient Stream Loss-Tolerant Authentication (TESLA) and Bloom Filters (BF) is proposed for vehicle-to-vehicleand vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. The proposed scheme is based onTESLA to achieve lightweight source authentication. Also, Bloom Filter (BF) is utilisedto authenticate TESLA keys instead of digital signatures. Therefore, the proposed workfocuses on reducing the usage of digital signatures to achieve higher success rate andless overheads.The use of digital certificates for authentication in VCS fulfil all the security requirementsbut it can have a high impact on the communication and computation overheads.Thus, a certificateless authentication framework for Vehicular Networks was proposed.This is an enhancement of the first contribution by allowing RSUs authenticate vehicleswithout the need for a digital certificate. However, a digitally signed authentication tokenis used instead of digital signatures, to reduce the communication and computationoverheads while fulfilling the security requirements.An enhanced Certificateless and Lightweight Authentication Scheme for Vehicular CommunicationsSystems is proposed. This work is an extension of the second contribution.Since the performance of TESLA was shown to be suitable for VCS in the first contribution,it is utilised in this contribution as well. Therefore, in this work employs thelightweight authentication token with the lightweight broadcast authentication schemeto achieve the maximum efficiency for VCS. Conventional TESLA does not support instantauthentication, which is undesired for safety-oriented applications. Future movementsof a vehicle is used to enhance the verification of messages, where each vehicleconstructs a table of the future movement prediction before a message is sent. Securityanalysis has been carried out and extensive simulation of our scheme. The results showthat it can withstand a variety of attacks and has a better performance in terms ofverification delay, scalability, and communication overhead than existing schemes, andtherefore, the scheme is well suited for VCS

A lightweight authentication and privacy-preserving scheme for VANETs using TESLA and Bloom Filters

In Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs), broadcasted beacon messages are critical as most safety applications rely on them. However, the design of a secure broadcast authentication faces many security and privacy challenges as vehicles are vulnerable to active attacks and the revealing of location. In this paper, we propose a lightweight authentication scheme using Timed Efficient Stream Loss-Tolerant Authentication (TESLA) scheme and Bloom Filters that not only prevents active attacks but also adds a privacy-preserving feature to make the scheme have better performance. Simulation results indicate the scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of verification time and the level of anonymity. Keywords: Bloom Filters, Authentication, Privacy, VANETs, TESL

The impact of message encryption on teleoperation for space applications

In-orbit construction and maintenance of large-scale structures such as the International Space Station (ISS) have led to increasing interest in developing effective and efficient teleoperation systems. However, teleoperation requires communication of data between the operator and the operation site which may be subject to cyber-attacks. Cyber security measures such as encryption and hashing can prevent these attacks from being successful however, these security measures create additional overheads in communications that can impact on the operators ability to effectively control the operations at a distance. This paper investigates the time delay impact of encryption security controls and presents an analysis of the impact of different encryption algorithms on the communication channel. An awareness of the performance cost of encryption methods allows mission planners to consider the risk of security compromise and balance this against performance costs

Security and Privacy in Location-Based Services for Vehicular and Mobile Communications: An Overview, Challenges and Countermeasures

Location-based Services (LBS) have gained popularity as a result of the advances in mobile and communication technologies. LBS provide users with relevant information based on their location. In spite of the desirable features provided by LBS, the geographic location of users are not adequately protected. Location privacy is one of the major challenges in vehicular and mobile networks. In this article, we analyse the security and privacy requirements for LBS in vehicular and mobile networks. Specifically, this paper covers privacy enhancing technologies and cryptographic approaches that provide location privacy in vehicular and mobile networks. The different approaches proposed in literature are compared and open research areas are identified