Zijian Bao, Debiao He, Huaqun Wang, Min Luo · 5 authors
With the proliferation of vehicular networking and data in the era of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), ensuring privacy-preserving authentication and data privacy during analysis has emerged as a pivotal research focus. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-assisted privacy-preserving authentication protocolBapwith user-controlled data unlinkability for VANETs. We leverage Pointcheval-Sanders (PS) signatures to design a privacy-preserving authentication protocol that supports user traceability and revocation of malicious users. Additionally, we introduce an auxiliary data processor (DP) in our model to analyze VANET data with explicit and implicit linkability. The DP is capable of linking messages on the same or different topics, enabling minimal privacy disclosure during Big Data analysis. We provide a detailed proof and demonstrate that our scheme satisfies the required properties. Finally, performance evaluations demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed scheme. While supporting the mentioned functionalities, the gas cost is limited to a small range, and the signature size is only 354 bytes.
Large-Scale Heterogeneous Networks (LS-HetNets) integrate different types of networks enabled by various technologies into a global coverage network to offer seamless networking. Securing End-to-End (E2E) communication in LS-HetNets is an effective way to gain high communication security and user trust across multiple network domains. However, most of existing research on E2E security suffers from several severe drawbacks, such as single point of failures, identity privacy leakage, and poor generality. The literature still lacks a universal E2E communication security framework for LS-HetNets. In this paper, we propose Sec-E2E, a decentralized framework that uses blockchain to provide E2E communication security in LS-HetNets. It comprises several components that work in harmony to ensure secure and efficient E2E communications. Sec-E2E includes a blockchain-enabled protocol for User Equipment (UE) registration and key management, a privacy-preserving mutual authentication protocol that allows Serving Networks (SNs) and UEs to authenticate with each other quickly, and a secure session key generation and distribution scheme empowered with a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Security and performance evaluation demonstrates that Sec-E2E not only meets desired design goals of security and privacy, but also performs with higher efficiency compared with existing representative works.
Edgar Wallace Bowlin, Mohammad S. Khan, Biju Bajracharya, Bhargav Appasani · 5 authors
Current research with Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) has focused on adapting an efficient consensus mechanism and reducing the blockchain size while maintaining security. Care must be taken when implementing blockchains within VANET applications to leverage the chains’ strengths while mitigating their weaknesses. These chains can serve as distributed ledgers that provide storage for more than financial transactions. The security provided by longer blockchains constitutes a nearly immutable, decentralized data structure that can store any data relevant to the applications. However, these chains must be adapted to the ad-hoc, resource-constrained environments found in VANETs. In the absence of abundant resources and reliable network connections, chain operation and maintenance must address the challenges presented by highly mobile nodes in novel ways, including situations such as emergency messaging that require real-time responses. Researchers have included different mechanisms to realize lightweight blockchains, such as adding reputation to existing consensus mechanisms, condensing the consensus committees, using geographical information, and monitoring a nodes behavior in attempts to adapt blockchains to these domains. This paper analyzes the challenges and gives solutions for these different mechanisms to realize lightweight blockchains for VANETs.
Secure communication between connected electric vehicles is critical for realizing the full potential of the Internet of Vehicles. However, the authentication and security of the information shared between vehicles remains a major challenge. In this work, we propose a blockchain-based data authentication algorithm to enable secure information sharing between electric vehicles. Our algorithm leverages the distributed ledger and consensus mechanism of blockchain technology to overcome limitations of traditional public key infrastructure schemes for large-scale vehicle networks. Each electric vehicle has a unique key pair and address on the blockchain network. Vehicles generate digital signatures using their private keys to share data, while recipients verify the signatures using corresponding public keys for authentication. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves high authentication success rates with acceptable latency and computation overhead. The algorithm provides benefits like decentralization, transparency and non-repudiation compared to existing approaches. Our work indicates the potential of blockchain to enhance security, trust and cooperation in Internet of Vehicles applications.
With the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) technology and the expansion of UAV application scenarios, the demand for communication and airspace resources is increasing explosively. Traditional UAV authentication and access control schemes cannot meet the requirements of seamless access, and face security and efficiency challenges. Considering the mobility of UAVs, cross-domain authentication operations are repeatedly performed, resulting in low efficiency. Centralized authentication scheme faces the risk of single point of failure. In addition, relying solely on cryptography methods cannot meet regulatory requirements. To solve the above challenges, we present a blockchain-assisted UAV authentication and access control scheme, where regulatory authority (RA) and service provider (SP) collaborate on-chain to conduct UAV management efficiently and securely. Specifically, Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) is introduced to help regulation in our scheme. Access point (AP) completes the UAV access based on ADS-B signals and on-chain information, which makes the access process reliable and secure. We demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of our scheme through extensive experiments.
<p>Adaptive transport technologies based on vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) has proven considerable potential in light of the developing expansion of driver assistance and automobile telecommunication systems. However, confidentiality and safety are the vital challenges in vehicular ad hoc networks which could be seriously impaired by malicious attackers. While protecting vehicle privacy from threats, it is imperative to stop internal vehicles from putting out bogus messages. Considering these issues, a novel machine learning based message authentication combined with blockchain and inter planetary file system (IPFS) is proposed to achieve message dissemination in a secured way. Blockchain is the emerging technology which attempts to solve these problems by producing tamper proof events of records in a distributed environment and inter planetary file system used in the framework is a protocol designed to store the event with content addressability. Along with this combined technology, the source metadata information collected from the inter planetary file system is stored via a smart contract and uploaded to the distributed ledger technology (DLT). For performing event authentication, K-means clustering and support vector machine (SVM) classifier is employed in this framework. K-means clustering performs clustering of vehicles and it is marked malicious or not malicious. After clustering, support vector machine classifier detects the malicious event messages. By this way, the malicious messages are identified and it is dropped. Only the secure messages are forwarded in the network. Finally, our approach is capable of creating a safe and decentralized vehicular ad hoc network architecture with accountability and confidentiality through theoretical study and simulations.</p>
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs)
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
As smart transportation systems evolve, secure and efficient V2X communication between vehicles and infrastructure becomes crucial. This paper introduces a Vehicle-to-Blockchain (V2B) communication architecture, leveraging blockchain technology for transparent and decentralized interactions. Our work contributes to the integration of blockchain into V2X and IoT for next-generation transportation systems. We propose several novel blockchain use cases, including a blockchain-based vehicle ownership system based on the multi-token standard, a vehicle scoring system, blockchain–IoT integration, and a decentralized ticket management system for transportation services. The architecture addresses key aspects, such as data integration, validity, and secure messaging, and introduces a decentralized payment system and marketplace for transportation in smart cities. We specifically emphasize the technical implementation of smart contracts for these use cases, underscoring their role in ensuring robust and reliable interactions. Through our decentralized approach, we pave the way for a transformative transportation ecosystem that is adaptable, resilient, and capable of meeting the evolving needs of smart cities.
Xiaohong Zhang, Jiaming Lai, Ata Jahangir Moshayedi
Abstract Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is the hotspot research field of wireless mobile ad hoc network, it provides a new opportunity to create a safe and efficient transportation environment. However, as an open network where information has to interact frequently, it is difficult to ensure the security of data transmitted in VANETs and protect the privacy of drivers. Many existing information-sharing schemes use complex encryption algorithms to enable secure traffic data sharing. Nevertheless, these schemes are not suitable for VANETs because of their high computational overhead and lack of corresponding tracking mechanisms for malicious vehicles. Therefore, a traffic data security sharing scheme is designed that combines blockchain technology and traceable ring signature algorithms to secure the transmitted messages. The traceable ring signature algorithm is formulated in combination with bilinear pairing, enabling conditional privacy protection instead of traditional ring signature. To improve the efficiency of VANETs, this scheme introduces edge computing technology to reduce the computational burden of Road Side Units (RSUs) by offloading most of the computational tasks to the servers via edge nodes. In addition, we use smart contract to track malicious vehicles. Security analysis and performance comparison show that our scheme is more efficient and secure for drivers than other existing related schemes.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs), defined as vehicles capable of navigation and decision-making independent of human intervention, represent a revolutionary advancement in transportation technology. These vehicles operate by synthesizing an array of sophisticated technologies, including sensors, cameras, GPS, radar, light imaging detection and ranging (LiDAR), and advanced computing systems. These components work in concert to accurately perceive the vehicle’s environment, ensuring the capacity to make optimal decisions in real-time. At the heart of AV functionality lies the ability to facilitate intercommunication between vehicles and with critical road infrastructure—a characteristic that, while central to their efficacy, also renders them susceptible to cyber threats. The potential infiltration of these communication channels poses a severe threat, enabling the possibility of personal information theft or the introduction of malicious software that could compromise vehicle safety. This paper offers a comprehensive exploration of the current state of AV technology, particularly examining the intersection of autonomous vehicles and emotional intelligence. We delve into an extensive analysis of recent research on safety lapses and security vulnerabilities in autonomous vehicles, placing specific emphasis on the different types of cyber attacks to which they are susceptible. We further explore the various security solutions that have been proposed and implemented to address these threats. The discussion not only provides an overview of the existing challenges but also presents a pathway toward future research directions. This includes potential advancements in the AV field, the continued refinement of safety measures, and the development of more robust, resilient security mechanisms. Ultimately, this paper seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the safety and security landscape of autonomous vehicles, fostering discourse on the intricate balance between technological advancement and security in this rapidly evolving field.
Recent Blockchain-based Internet of Vehicles (BIoV) solutions are proposed to provide the capabilities of trust management and incentive distribution for traffic information interaction in decentralized trustless Internet of Vehicles (IoV). However, existing trust management methods in BIoV are designed based on subjective user feedback, which is vulnerable to bad-mouthing and collusion attacks. Besides, these incentive strategies achieve accurate information interaction based on the game theory, yet it is challenging for the practical IoV scenario without completely explicit parameters. To address these issues, we propose TI-BIoV, a traffic information interaction system based on three blockchains for IoV with the nonsubjective trust evaluation and optimal incentive with partial inexplicit parameters. Specifically, a nonsubjective trust mechanism is designed based on the traffic information offset calculated by other related traffic information, which ensures the change of vehicle trust value without any subjective factors. On this basis, a trust-based consensus protocol, which selects entities with high trust values as participants, is given to realize the reliable public audit of transactions. According to traffic information accuracy measurements, we develop a$Q$-learning-based algorithm to encourage vehicles continuously submit accurate traffic information and optimally schedule the incentive for both platform and vehicle via training with incompletely explicit parameters of TI-BIoV. Finally, we analyze the security properties and common attacks of TI-BIoV and implement a prototype. The experimental results show that TI-BIoV achieves reliable consensus with nonsubjective trust evaluation and runs stably for a long time with two-sided incentive strategies.
Bad weather or environmental factors, particularly in remote mountain areas, may result in unsafe driving conditions and consequently road traffic accidents. As the deployment of large-scale sensing nodes for reporting road conditions is too expensive, the crowdsourcing method or reporting by sensors in vehicles themselves will be easier to deploy and more practical. However, those participant sensing methods impose some difficulties, such as fake information, reporter misbehavior, and timeliness. Thus, we propose a tri-blockchain-based Internet of Vehicles system, called TriBoDeS, to facilitate real-time information detection and sharing. It is designed to guarantee concurrency and security to dynamically store, manage, and share information uploaded by vehicles with great efficiency. Such information will be announced on the blockchain under the autonomous identification of vehicles in low-trust conditions. In order to ensure the software’s security, TriBoDeS can monitor the software’s state, detect identified malicious activities, and respond accordingly. To ensure data security, a role-based management mechanism is introduced to achieve fine-grained control over permissions, and confidence rules are established to guarantee the authenticity of the data. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed scheme, we evaluate its performance (e.g., computing and communication overheads) and security (e.g., resiliency against common attacks) over a consortium blockchain. The experimental results demonstrate that, under the conditions of a sufficient number of vehicles, the TriBoDeS system is capable of real-time information sharing while ensuring the security of user information. Compared to conventional single-chain systems, the TriBoDeS system achieves a 2.75-time improvement in efficiency.
Najam Saqib, Saif Ur Rehman Malik, Adeel Anjum, Madiha Haider Syed · 7 authors
Recent developments in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and vehicular adhoc networks (VANET) have revolutionized our infrastructure, making it safer, more convenient, and efficient. VANET provide smart traffic control, event allocation, and real-time information. Existing vehicles in VANET are now equipped with intelligent navigation, entertainment, and emergency applications. However, the highly connected nature of these vehicles poses a significant safety and security risk to drivers and assets which can result in life-threatening consequences. Location privacy is critical, and robust network security techniques should be used to counter threats in VANET environments. Existing schemes like obfuscation, mix-zones, and silent periods have preserved location privacy to some extent but have poor Quality of Service (QoS) and lack both efficiency and security. To address these issues, a shadowing scheme is introduced, which is an improvement of earlier schemes used for location privacy. This approach ensures better service to the vehicle by allowing precise location-based service (LBS) requests to the LBS server and uses blockchain technology for storing vehicular certificates. The inclusion of a group leader significantly reduces the time taken for implementing the scheme, improving efficiency and scalability. The anonymity set size increases over time, offering better privacy protection especially in densely populated areas. The proposed scheme overcomes drawbacks of existing techniques which includes reduced location accuracy and low-quality service in spatial obfuscation techniques, limited applicability and high tracking rate in shadow-based approaches, and reduced utility in distance-based schemes. Moreover, single point of failure and resource-intensive group formation in group-based schemes, and dependency on additional infrastructure in mix-zone-based schemes are also overcome. The proposed scheme’s experimental results validate it, showing that it outperforms current state-of-the-art schemes based on metrics, such as anonymity set size, entropy, and tracking success ratio.
<ns3:p>Continuous improvement in transportation systems and smart vehicles' appearance make new highly intensive applications. Complex applications need high-performance capabilities, real-time responses, and generate massive amounts of data to process and exchange. This presents the idea of vehicular edge computing (VEC), which is proposed to handle complex applications and satisfy smart vehicle processing requirements. VEC enables computation offloading to an edge server to reduce communication latency, execution cost and energy consumption greatly. However, offloading to another node opens up new vulnerabilities regarding security and privacy. Moreover, trust issues in such an untrustworthy environment need an effective trust management solution and incentive mechanisms to improve overall security. This will increase the computation offloading success rate and the vehicles' willingness to share their resources. Particularly given the high transportability and heterogeneity of vehicular networks, the conventional security and trust management methods are inadequate. Blockchain, the rapidly emerging trend technology, is a unique solution that can help overcome security and privacy issues and meet trust management and incentive mechanism goals. Blockchain’s immutable distributed ledger, traceability, consensus validation system and smart contract features can improve vehicular network security. Although most research is focused on enhancing the performance of computation offloading algorithms, blockchain security solutions in computation offloading scenarios are not fully discussed. Thus, security and trust issues related to computation offloading in VEC environments need more consideration since supporting the new complex vehicular applications is essential. Therefore, this paper provides a review of recent surveys and studies, an overview of VEC, computation offloading and blockchain, in addition to discussing security, privacy and trust in vehicular networks and computation offloading while considering blockchain as a distributed security solution. We propose a new paradigm called blockchain edge of vehicle (BEoV) at the end, which enables several blockchain-based security services for vehicular computation offloading in particular.</ns3:p>
Tuğçe Bilen, Müge Erel-Özçevı̇k, Elif Bozkaya, Yusuf Özçevik
Providing Internet access above-the-clouds has made the development of aircraft networks more important than ever. However, new and emerging Internet applications have increased the challenge of providing seamless and real-time connectivity with traditional routing algorithms for aircraft networks in the upcoming 6G due to the highly-dynamic and unstable topology. Moreover, traditional routing mechanisms are prone to routing attacks, which can increase the packet transfer delay. To this end, in this paper, we present Merkle Tree-based secure routing mechanism with the assistance of digital twin. First, we construct a blockchain-based system with decentralized and distributed characteristics for the clustering of aircraft. Then, we propose a novel Merkle-Tree-based secure routing algorithm by combining real-time and historical data with digital twins. A Merkle tree is a data structure that contains gathered data from sender and receiver aircraft. Merkle root in an aircraft cluster forwards the gathered data to a satellite or a ground station in a secure manner. Accordingly, Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-256 is used for data integrity and a tree-based structure is built to reduce the number of transactions so that it is aimed to prevent malicious aircraft attacks. Finally, we show through a simulation environment, how blockchain processing time and the number of transactions can be reduced by meeting the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for aircraft networks in 6G. Furthermore, we also use Proof of Stake (PoS) to reduce the computational time for mining a block as well as reducing the packet delivery ratio and packet transfer delay.
Recent advancements in digital accident forensics, a conceptual evidence management paradigm developed using smart contracts and interplanetary file system in iov. This paper comprehensively summarizes the Smart contract implementation blockchain framework for vehicle accident investigation in IoV. We investigate comparing some review papers to find the classification of the smart contract. Using blockchain, evidence management provides an immutable and auditable method for investigating and resolving accident cases. Precisely we first investigate the security and privacy threats; therefore, Smart contracts provide effective access control for proof data and reports. On both the public and private Ethereum blockchains, the cost of setting up and executing transactions using smart contracts is assessed. However, we utilized the Inter Planetary File System most efficiently while minimizing memory and execution costs. Finally, we draw open research directions for building future digital-proof management.
Q H Fan, Yang Xin, Bin Jia, Yang Zhang · 5 authors
Achieving efficient and secure shared data in vehicular networks is important for the development of smart transportation. Sharing data among intelligent vehicles not only enriches vehicle services but also improves traffic safety and efficiency. However, due to the specific nature of vehicular networks, security and privacy concerns prevent data providers from participating in the data sharing process. In addition, the quality of the data shared in the vehicular network is uneven and unreliable, and the reliability and authenticity of data sharing need to be further improved. In this paper, we propose a novel consortium blockchain-based trust model in vehicular networks (COBATS) to achieve secure storage and data sharing. To improve the quality of data sharing, we also design a trust management model capable of filtering malicious recommendations, which reduces the hazard of malicious nodes and ensures high-quality data sharing among vehicles. Moreover, we present a consensus mechanism with joint Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) to reduce resource consumption and improve the algorithm’s efficiency. The simulation results show that COBATS can improve the security and quality of data sharing. Furthermore, our model also can effectively handle certain attacks.
The big data of Internet of Vehicles contributes to the development of intelligent transportation. Privacy protection in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is the core factor to improve user and vehicle participation. This article proposes a novel blockchain-based dynamic extensible privacy protection and message authentication scheme for VANETs. It minimizes the computation cost of message authentication based on an elliptic curve and message batch verification. Based on the Chinese remainder theorem, this scheme protects transmitted message security by adaptively and dynamically responding to vehicles and roadside units accessing the VANET. It offers a smart contract-based forensics and tracing solution from the accident vehicle. In addition, strict security proof and analysis that the scheme meets the security requirements for the VANET. It evaluates the efficiency of the scheme, and the results show its practicality.
As one of the most valuable vehicle-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications, Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have received extensive attention since it was proposed. In order to ensure the safety of VANETs and improve the communication efficiency between moving vehicles and different Roadside Units (RSUs), some handover authentication protocols for VANETs have been proposed. However, the existing protocols have some problems such as excessive computation overhead, untraceable malicious messages, and the inability to resist RSU captured attacks. To solve the above problems, we propose a blockchain-based protocol to achieve Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) authentication, V2I handover authentication, and Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) broadcasting authentication. The advantages of our protocol are: (1) It achieves lightweight V2I handover authentication and V2V broadcast authentication, dynamic anonymity strategy and embedding strategy of pseudo-identity and vehicle feature are used to guarantee anonymity and traceability simultaneously; (2) The announcement can be broadcasted verifiably without the help of transportation infrastructure (e.g., RSU) or the Trusted Authority (TA); and (3) The Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF) technology is used to resist RSU captured attacks. We use formal security proof under random oracle model to prove the security of the proposed protocol. Compared with related V2I handover authentication protocols, our protocol can resist RSU captured attacks and other various known attacks. The sum of first and handover authentication efficiency of our protocol is 37.93% higher than the previous most effective protocol, while maintaining the same level of communication and storage costs.
Yijing Lin, Zhipeng Gao, Hongyang Du, Jiawen Kang · 8 authors
Blockchain-based Federated Learning (FL) technology enables vehicles to make smart decisions, improving vehicular services and enhancing the driving experience through a secure and privacy-preserving manner in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Many existing works exploit two-layer blockchain-based FL frameworks consisting of a mainchain and subchains for data interactions among intelligent vehicles, which resolve the limited throughput issue of single blockchain-based vehicular networks. However, the existing two-layer frameworks still suffer from a) strong dependency on predetermined and fixed parameters of vehicular blockchains which limit blockchain throughput and reliability; and b) high communication costs incurred by interactions among intelligent vehicles between the mainchain and subchains. To address the above challenges, we first design an adaptive blockchain-enabled FL framework for ITS based on blockchain sharding to facilitate decentralized vehicular data flows among intelligent vehicles. A streamline-based shard transmission mechanism is proposed to ensure communication efficiency almost without compromising the FL accuracy. We further formulate the proposed framework and propose an adaptive sharding mechanism using Deep Reinforcement Learning to automate the selection of parameters of vehicular shards. Numerical results clearly show that the proposed framework and mechanisms achieve adaptive, communication-efficient, credible, and scalable data interactions among intelligent vehicles.
Lu Wei, Jie Cui, Hong Zhong, Irina Bolodurina · 6 authors
Since the communication channels in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are wireless and open, malicious adversaries can monitor or fabricate messages transmitted across them. To secure vehicular communications, an authenticated key agreement (AKA) scheme needs to be designed for VNAETs. Traditional VANETs AKA schemes require the trusted authority (TA) to authenticate the legality of message and corresponding sender. However, the TA in these schemes is vulnerable to suffer from single-point-of-failure issues. Some blockchain-based VANETs AKA schemes have been proposed recently to address the deficiency. However, these schemes rely on the consortium or private blockchain in which TAs are still required for key generation, resulting that the practicality is limited. To solve the issue, we design a smart contract-based VANETs AKA scheme, where the AKA algorithm of our proposed scheme is implemented on smart contract deployed on a public blockchain system and the TA that is responsible for key generation will not be required. The security proof and analysis show that our proposed scheme satisfies the session-key semantic security and essential security and privacy requirements, respectively. The performance analysis demonstrates that our proposed scheme outperforms existing blockchain-based VANETs AKA schemes.