A Lightweight Secure Authentication Protocol for VANETs

Abstract

The vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) offer additional opportunities for the development of intelligent transportation. Network-connected vehicles can help drivers adjust their driving environment and improve overall road safety by accessing information such as maps, signal status and road conditions. Due to the open nature of the communication channel, it is necessary for the receiving vehicle to verify the source and integrity of the message. Most of the existing researches are based on PKI certificate authentication model. However, there are some problems in this model: the distribution, storage and revocation of identity certificates need to consume a lot of vehicle resources, and the centralized structural framework cannot form an effective supervision of node operation. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes an identity authentication mechanism based on blockchain and zero-knowledge proof. In the blockchain structure composed of fog nodes, vehicles only need to store the generation seeds of communication pseudonyms to complete the communication within the coverage of fog nodes, which can effectively reduce the resource overhead caused by pseudonym distribution and revocation. Security analysis shows that our scheme can meet the security requirements of VANETs, and performance analysis shows that our scheme is better than existing schemes.