Mishri Saleh Al-Marshoud, Mehmet Sabır Kiraz, Ali H. Al-Bayati
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are powerful platforms for vehicular data services and applications. The increasing number of vehicles has made the vehicular network diverse, dynamic, and large-scale, making it difficult to meet the 5G network’s demanding requirements. Decentralized systems are interesting and provide attractive services because they are publicly available (transparency), have an append-only ledger (robust integrity protection), remove single points of failure, and enable distributed key management and communication in a peer-to-peer network. Researchers dedicated substantial efforts to advancing vehicle communications, however conventional cryptographic mechanisms are insufficient which enabled us to look at decentralized technologies. Therefore, we revisit decentralized approaches with VANETs. Endpoint devices hold a wallet which may incorporate threshold key management methods like MPC wallets, HD Wallets, or multi-party threshold ECDSA/EdDSA/BLS. We also discuss trust management approaches and demonstrate how decentralization can improve integrity, security, privacy, and resilience to single points of failure. We also conduct a comprehensive review, comparing them with current requirements, and the latest authentication and secure communication architectures, which require the involvement of trusted but non-transparent authorities in certificate issuance/revocation. We highlight the limitations of these schemes from PKI deployment and recommend future research, particularly in the realm of quantum cryptography.
Usama Arshad, Zahid Halim, Hisham Alasmary, Muhammad Waqas
Blockchain technology is used often as a merger with other technologies to achieve a high level of security, privacy, and robustness and to handle issues such as maliciousness of nodes, privacy leakage, the selfishness of nodes, communication delays, and high execution and transaction costs. There is currently a lack of a comprehensive system for automating and cost-effectively managing vehicle repairs, maintenance, and other associated services. To solve such issues we proposed a novel futuristic comprehensive model that integrates a blockchain-based framework to safely record vehicle maintenance, validate repair services, and oversee parts inventory. It employs smart contracts and consensus protocols to secure communications and data storage, thus reducing data breaches and vulnerabilities from single-point failures. A reward system is embedded within the network to encourage positive behavior and deter detrimental actions. We also incorporated advanced privacy-ensuring methods, like zero-knowledge proofs and secure multi-party computation, to safeguard sensitive data while preserving its utility. Our model features automatic detection and response mechanisms for node failure, improving network resilience by 25% thus also providing a 20% reduction in execution, operational costs, and scalability with an enhancement of 15%, underscoring the model’s efficiency in vehicular repair and maintenance activities. Results and simulations clearly depict the overall performance and efficiency in terms of security, privacy, node failure, and the management of vehicle repairs with respect to other closely related models.
Tudor Andreica, Adrian Musuroi, Alfred Anistoroaei, Camil Jichici · 5 authors
The development of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for in-vehicle buses has gained a lot of momentum in recent years as the number of reported vulnerabilities and the degree of interconnectivity for modern vehicles are on the rise. Since intrusion detection is resource consuming, it can be performed on computationally capable Android head units that are now present inside vehicles. Moreover, these units are connected to the internet, which enables the use of more complex algorithms that run in cloud environments. In this work we develop one such approach: an IDS that consists of a locally installed copy, running on head units, and a centralized instance of it that runs in the cloud and monitors traffic for groups of similar vehicles. Additionally, the centralized instance is part of a cloud service for intrusion detection which is continuously updated with the most recent types of attacks. The classification results of the cloud-based service are further analyzed by an incident response team which confirms the presence of known attacks, analyzes new types of attacks and assesses their impact. The output of this activity is stored on the Blockchain as ISO/SAE 21434 compliant reports, ensuring the transparency and traceability of the reported incidents.
Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) hold promise for traffic management and driver safety, but security and privacy challenges persist. Existing protocols face limitations in key management and verification time costs. An efficient blockchain-based conditional privacy-preserving authentication mechanism leverages PKI and the functionality of Ethereum. The protocol optimizes certificate management, reduces storage requirements, and supports batch verification, improving traceability and verification efficiency. Evaluation of test networks and VANET simulations demonstrate the proposed algorithm’s superiority over existing algorithms. Although the existing solutions handle traceability time costs and verification costs efficiently. Further improvement in the efficiency of existing state-of-art models can be achieved by encoding all functions before hashing. This proposed approach tends to be more gas-efficient than previous work, particularly in dynamic data structure scenarios. Gas efficiency improvements are often more noticeable in VANET scenarios where terabytes of messages are communicated by vehicles daily, and this can also reduce the size of Signature of Knowledge (SoK) proof by using compression and parameter tuning techniques.
Akhtar Badshah, Ghulam Abbas, Muhammad Waqas, Fazal Muhammad · 7 authors
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) supported by smart vehicles have revolutionized modern transportation, offering a wide range of applications and services, such as electronic toll collection, collision avoidance alarms, real-time parking management, and traffic planning. However, the open communication channels among various entities, including smart vehicles, roadside infrastructure, and fleet management systems, introduce security and privacy vulnerabilities. To address these concerns, we propose a novel security framework, named blockchain-assisted lightweight authenticated key agreement security framework for smart vehicles-enabled ITS (BASF-ITS), which ensures data protection both during transit and while stored on cloud servers. BASF-ITS employs a combination of efficient cryptographic primitives, including hash functions, XOR operator, ASCON, elliptic curve cryptography, and physical unclonable functions (PUF), to design authenticated key agreement schemes. The inclusion of PUF significantly enhances the system’s resistance to physical attacks, preventing tampering attempts. To ensure data integrity when stored on the cloud, our framework incorporates blockchain technology. By leveraging the immutability and decentralization of the blockchain, BASF-ITS effectively safeguards data at rest, providing an additional layer of security. We rigorously analyze the security of BASF-ITS and demonstrate its strong resistance against potential security ass aults, making it a robust and reliable solution for smart vehicle-enabled ITS. In a comparative analysis with contemporary competing schemes, BASF-ITS emerges as a promising approach, offering superior functionality traits, enhanced security features, and reduced computation, communication, and storage costs. Furthermore, we present a practical implementation of BASF-ITS using blockchain technology, showcasing the computational time versus the “transactions per block” and the “number of mined blocks”, confirming its efficiency and viability in real-world scenarios.Note to Practitioners—This article is motivated by designing an efficient, lightweight, and anonymous blockchain-enabled authenticated security framework that can fix the security and privacy concerns in insecure environments for ITS applications, such as automated road speed enforcement, collision avoidance alarm systems, and traffic planning and management, etc. Authenticated key agreement schemes are extensively used to secure communications in the ITS environment. However, the existing state-of-the-art schemes are not efficient in terms of performance, are not resilient against potential security attacks, and do not support anonymity, untraceability, and unlinkability. Therefore, we propose the authenticated security framework to secure communication among the participating entities in the ITS environment. It utilizes efficient cryptographic primitives, such as hash function, XOR-operator, ASCON, elliptic curve cryptography, and PUF. It is shown that the proposed framework can be deployed as a robust tool to address the ITS security problems efficiently. Moreover, the proposed framework is lightweight and efficient and can be easily deployed in various ITS applications and other resource-constrained environments. However, the participating entities, such as vehicles and roadside units, must be PUF-enabled to deploy the proposed framework.
Introduction/Background This study explores the limitations of conventional encryption in real-world communications due to resource constraints. Additionally, it delves into the integration of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) in autonomous cars for trajectory management within Connected And Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs). This study unveils the resource-constrained real-world communications, conventional encryption faces challenges that hinder its feasibility. This introduction sets the stage for exploring the integration of DRL in autonomous cars and the transformative potential of Blockchain technology in ensuring secure data transfer, especially within the dynamic landscape of the transportation industry. Materials and Methods The research methodology involves implementing DRL techniques for autonomous car trajectory management within the context of connected and autonomous CAVs. Additionally, a detailed exploration of Blockchain technology deployment, consensus procedures, and decentralized data storage mechanisms. Results Results showcase the impracticality of conventional encryption in resource-constrained real-world communications. Moreover, the implementation of DRL and Blockchain technology proves effective in optimizing autonomous car subsystems, reducing training costs, and establishing secure, globally accessible government-managed transportation for enhanced data integrity and accessibility. Discussion The discussion delves into the implications of the study's findings, emphasizing the transformative potential of DRL in optimizing autonomous car subsystems. Furthermore, it explores the broader implications of Blockchain technology in revolutionizing secure, decentralized data transfer within the transportation industry. Conclusion In conclusion, the study highlights the impracticality of conventional encryption in real-world communications and underscores the significant advancements facilitated by DRL in autonomous vehicle trajectory management. The integration of Blockchain technology not only ensures secure data transfer but also paves the way for a globally accessible transportation blockchain, reshaping the future landscape of the industry.
Na Wang, Ziyu Zhou, Jianwei Liu, Lunzhi Deng · 5 authors
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) enables vehicles and other smart terminals to share data in order to improve traffic safety and efficiency. With the increase in data volume and data interaction frequency, the burden of the central server increases dramatically, and it is difficult for resource-limited vehicles to store and verify all messages in the untrusted environment as well. Therefore, a secure and distributed IoV data-sharing scheme needs to be constructed. This paper proposes a hybrid proofof-stake (PoS) blockchain consensus and constructs a secure and efficient distributed IoV data-sharing scheme based on it. In this scheme, participants can store and share data securely in a distributed way through blockchain. The hybrid PoS blockchain consensus, where block producers are chosen based on their own stakes, and multiple trusted managers supervise each other updating head blocks periodically, maintains a more secure blockchain as a consistent and tamper-proof record for data sharing, than some researches using existing consensus, as shown in the security analysis. Every entity can participate in the blockchain consensus equally, without consuming high computation power, which improves the distribution degree and achieves co-governance of the IoV system. The performance evaluation shows that referring to the Gini coefficient, our scheme achieves a higher degree of decentralization than other schemes with only RSUs participants. In this way, vehicles collaborating with roadside units, realize distributed storage and secure data sharing to whoever with their authorization.
The proliferation of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) highlights the crucial need for secure, privacy-protecting inter-vehicle communication. By integrating blockchain technology with a safe certificate-less aggregate signature process, this research presents a novel approach to enhancing VANET security. Traditional VANET signature systems that rely on PKI and certificates have their limitations solved by the suggested approach. Using a certificate-less paradigm eliminates the requirement for a certificate authority when creating keys, making key exposure and compromise less probable. By combining several signatures into one smaller one, the aggregate signature method significantly decreases network communication cost. The paper introduces blockchain technology as an extra component to the certificate-less aggregate signature, further ensuring the honesty and openness of the VANET. The blockchain records and validates transactions, aggregate signatures, key alterations, and more using its distributed and immutable ledger. This not only improves the signature scheme but also creates a VANET environment that is trustworthy and robust.
Shovon Das Chowdhury, Tanjil Ahmed, Ruhul Amin, Rahat Ahmed Chowdhury · 6 authors
The escalating growth in population has led to a substantial increase in both private and public transportation on roads. Consequently, the surge in accidents, traffic rule violations, and other traffic-related offenses has become a daily concern. Addressing these issues is crucial for ensuring the safety of passengers and enhancing transparency in driver recruitment, especially when considering violations that may have occurred abroad. This paper introduces S- DrivingRecords, focusing on pivotal functionalities such as the registration of cases related to traffic rule violations or accidents, case withdrawal, and the sharing of driver history with external Decentralized Applications (DApps). The system facilitates case registration through a dedicated traffic DApp, enabling drivers to share their records with other entities, be they companies or individuals. This feature allows individuals to conduct thorough checks on a driver's history before making decisions such as hiring or booking. The implementation employs Hyperledger Fabric as a distributed ledger to ensure the security of data, while the use of Hyperledger Cacti facilitates seamless collaboration with different systems.
the air traffic management (ATM) system is a comprehensive information-based intelligent system that provides seamless services and dynamic integrated management of air traffic and airspace through the cooperation of all relevant parties in civil aviation. The ATM adopts an integrated “space-air-ground” network structure to provide reliable services for the security and efficiency of civil aviation flights, which is an important infrastructure to support and guarantee civil aviation transportation and an important support point for the development of civil aviation as a whole. The composition of the ATM is wide and complex, and contains many business systems and user types. In the face of the increasingly serious information security threats, the business collaboration of ATM and the shared use of ATM data are subject to certain restrictions and challenges. According to the Aviation Network Security Strategy released by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2019, there is an urgent need to research the basic theories, core methods and key technologies for ATM information security assurance that are compatible with the characteristics of ATM composition and information security assurance needs. From the core research objective of ATM information security assurance, this paper designs a future ATM security architecture based on blockchain technology, referred to as ATMChain, to meet the real operational needs of ATM trustworthiness, security and availability. ATMChain takes ATM trustworthy services as the core and builds an ATM information security base with “endogenous security” features. Then, three security function modules, namely, trusted authentication, data sharing, and access control, are designed to realize the 4A (Authentication, Account, Audit, Authorization) security functions of ATM. Finally, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis and performance evaluation of ATMChain security architecture. The results show that the research in this paper will help solve the current bottlenecks in ATM information security assurance, promote technological innovation, and ultimately facilitate the realization of the vision of global ATM interoperability proposed by ICAO.
Abdullah Lakhan, Mazin Abed Mohammed, Karrar Hameed Abdulkareem, Muhammet Deveci · 7 authors
The Intelligent Transport System (ITS) is an emerging paradigm that offers numerous services at the infrastructure level for vehicle applications. Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) is an advanced form of ITS where diverse vehicle services are deployed on the roadside unit. V2I consists of distributed computing nodes where transport applications are parallel processed. Many research challenges exist in the presented V2I paradigms regarding security, cyber-attacks, and application processing among heterogeneous nodes. These cyber-attacks, Sybil attacks, and their attempts cause a lack of security and degrade the V2I performance in the presented paradigms. This paper presents a new secure blockchain framework that handles cyber-attacks, as mentioned earlier. This paper formulates this complex problem as a combinatorial problem, encompassing concave and convex problems. The convex function minimizes the given constraints, such as time and security risk, and the concave function improves performance and accuracy. Therefore, numerous constraints, such as time, energy, malware detection accuracy, and application deadlines, require optimization for the considered problem. Combining the jointly non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and long short-term memory (LSTM) schemes is the best way to meet the problem’s limitations. In this study, the paper designed a malware dataset with known and unknown malware. The different kinds of malware lists (e.g., cyber-attacks) are considered in the form of known and unknown malware lists with the characteristics, size of code, where malware comes from, attack on which data, and current status of the workload after being attacked by the malware. Our main idea is to present blockchain, NSGA-II, and LSTM schemes that handle phishing, routing, Sybil, and 51% of cyber-attacks without compromising application performance. Simulation results show that the study reduces delay and energy, improves accuracy, and minimizes security risks for vehicular applications.
Priyanka Gaba, Ram Shringar Raw, Omprakash Kaiwartya, Mohammad Aljaidi
Vehicles are no longer stand-alone mechanical entities due to the advancements in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication-centric Internet of Connected Vehicles (IoV) frameworks. However, the advancement in connected vehicles leads to another serious security threat, online vehicle hijacking, where the steering control of vehicles can be hacked online. The feasibility of traditional security solutions in IoV environments is very limited, considering the intermittent network connectivity to cloud servers and vehicle-centric computing capability constraints. In this context, this paper presents a Blockchain-enabled Security Architecture for a connected vehicular Fog networking Environment (B-SAFE). Firstly, blockchain security and vehicular fog networking are introduced as preliminaries of the framework. Secondly, a three-layer architecture of B-SAFE is presented, focusing on vehicular communication, blockchain at fog nodes, and the cloud as trust and reward management for vehicles. Thirdly, details of the blockchain implementation at fog nodes is presented, along with a flowchart and algorithm. The performance of the evaluation of the proposed framework B-SAFE attests to the benefits in terms of trust, reward points, and threshold calculation.
Federated Learning (FL) allows the collaborative training of a global model in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs): data is maintained on the owner's device and the local gradient updates to the model are aggregated through a secure protocol. However, despite its many advantages, FL is vulnerable to various attacks from malicious clients. Current defenses have several weaknesses. For example, the server may still select malicious clients for aggregation even after they have been identified in previous rounds. They haven't considered the continual monitoring of clients to resist their possible defection or collusion that occurs throughout the FL training process. In response to the weaknesses, we describe a new aggregation model with continuous authentication suits for VANETs. The authentication implementation relies on a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof which preserves privacy. We also minimize the computation and communication overhead by designing a two-phase aggregation scheme, while introducing the Edge Devices (EDs) to assist the FL procedure. Finally, we introduce an application of such a model for VANETs. We describe the prototype implementation and experimentally confirm that the aggregation overhead of the client grows linearly and achieves training speed up over the prior work.
Sana Hafeez, Mahmoud A. Shawky, Mohammad Al-Quraan, Lina Mohjazi · 6 authors
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), an emerging architecture that embodies flying ad-hoc networks, face critical privacy and security challenges, mainly when engaged in data-sensitive missions. Therefore, message authentication is a crucial security feature in drone communications. This paper presents a Blockchain-based Efficient, and Trusted Authentication scheme for UAV communication, BETA-UAV, which exploits the inherent properties of blockchain technology concerning memorability and is immutable to record communication sessions via transactions using a smart contract. The smart contract in BETA-UAV allows participants to publish and call transactions from the blockchain network. Furthermore, transaction addresses are proof of freshness and trustworthiness for subsequent transmissions. Furthermore, we investigated their ability to resist active attacks, such as impersonation, replaying, and modification. In addition, we evaluate the gas costs associated with the functions of the smart contract by implementing a BETA-UAV on the Ethereum public blockchain. A comparison of the computation and communication overheads shows that the proposed approach can save significant costs over traditional techniques.
The demand for advanced traffic management systems in smart cities has grown in recent years in response to rising urban populations and the increasing importance of environmental preservation. With the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), it investigates how Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) may be implemented in decentralized virtual traffic signal systems. To overcome the drawbacks of conventional traffic light regulation, the suggested approach decentralizes the decision-making process over a set of interconnected devices. Integration of DLT, like blockchain, improves the system's openness, security, and robustness. Connected sensors and actuators in the IoT make it possible to gather and share real-time data, and techniques for traffic management that is both responsive and aware of its surroundings. To improve traffic flow, the virtual traffic light system's decentralized design helps save resources and lessens the system's overall carbon footprint. This article describes the system's technological architecture, explores its potential advantages, and explains how it may revolutionize urban traffic management for creating smart cities that are both sustainable and resilient.
To ensure the aggregation of a high-quality global model during the data-sharing process in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), current approaches primarily utilize gradient detection to mitigate malicious or low-quality parameter updates. However, deploying gradient detection in plain text neglects adequate privacy protection for vehicular data. This paper proposes the IoV-BDSS, a novel data-sharing scheme that integrates blockchain and hybrid privacy technologies to protect private data in gradient detection. This paper utilizes Euclidean distance to filter the similarity between vehicles and gradients, followed by encrypting the filtered gradients using secret sharing. Moreover, this paper evaluates the contribution and credibility of participating nodes, further ensuring the secure storage of high-quality models on the blockchain. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves data sharing while preserving privacy and accuracy. It also exhibits resilience against 30% poisoning attacks, with a test error rate remaining below 0.16. Furthermore, our scheme incurs a lower computational overhead and faster inference speed, markedly reducing experimental costs by approximately 26% compared to similar methods, rendering it suitable for highly dynamic IoV systems with unstable communication.
Chien‐Ming Chen, Qingkai Miao, Saru Kumari, Muhammad Khurram Khan · 5 authors
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) integrates wireless, mobile networking, cloud infrastructure, IoT, and wireless sensor networks, establishing an intelligent transportation system. While electric vehicles (EVs) contribute to environmental sustainability, they encounter challenges; battery-swapping technology emerges as a viable solution. Nevertheless, concerns arise regarding data security, privacy, and potential single points of failure. To address these issues, we propose a privacy-preserving authentication protocol based on intelligent blockchain. This protocol ensures the security and reliability of data storage and transaction verification processes, simultaneously upholding privacy, including user anonymity and untraceability. Additionally, leveraging the decentralized nature of intelligent blockchain, each participating node retains a copy of the data and verifies it through consensus algorithms to ensure its integrity and credibility. Verification using the Real-Oracle Random (ROR) model demonstrates both effectiveness and security, with informal analysis confirming resilience against known attacks. Comparative analysis underscores the proposed protocol’s security and performance advantages, placing emphasis on its reliability.