Connected and autonomous vehicles, as well as micro-mobility devices (e-scooters, e-bikes, and smartphones), constantly generate tremendous amounts of mobility data, comprising spatio-temporal trajectories and other sensory data, the sharing of which can assist in different safety and intelligent transportation system applications. However, constant sharing of such data for real-time mobility decisions could violate the privacy of respective users. At the same time, malicious users could generate and share false data, which would be potentially harmful for stakeholders relying on this data for their safety and mobility decisions. In this paper, we propose a new framework: Blockchain-Enabled Location Identification and Efficient Validation with Encryption” (BELIEVE)—a blockchain-based platform with multi-party computation (MPC)—to securely validate data from a mobility source without violating the user’s privacy. The smart contractin BELIEVE first enables a source to initiate the mobility data validation process, then enables mobile peers in the vicinity to reach a consensus on the data validation using MPC without requiring the source to share raw data, thereby preserving the user’s privacy. The spatio-temporal validation is then updated on a distributed ledger (Inter Planetary File System) as an immutable transaction. Real-time data validation is challenging, considering constant mobility alongside the reduction of resource consumption at the devices and, therefore, to address this, we employ an adaptive approach to the problem where the validation frequency as well as storage on the blockchain are dynamically decided by the nodes, based on the network conditions. We evaluate BELIEVE using a simulation model developed for a portion of New York City, U.S., transportation network and it achieves lower delays and overhead.
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are used for improving traffic efficiency and road safety. However, VANETs are vulnerable to various attacks from malicious vehicles. Malicious vehicles can disrupt the normal operation of VANET applications by broadcasting bogus event messages that may cause accidents, threatening people's lives. Therefore, the receiver node needs to evaluate the authenticity and trustworthiness of the sender vehicles and their messages before acting. Although several solutions for trust management in VANETs have been proposed to address these issues of malicious vehicles, existing trust management schemes have two main issues. Firstly, these schemes have no authentication components and assume the nodes are authenticated before communicating. Consequently, these schemes do not meet VANET security and privacy requirements. Secondly, existing trust management schemes are not designed to operate in various contexts of VANETs that occur frequently due to sudden variations in the network dynamics, making existing solutions impractical for VANETs. In this paper, we present a novel blockchain-assisted privacy-preserving and context-aware trust management framework that combines a blockchain-assisted privacy-preserving authentication scheme and a context-aware trust management scheme for securing communications in VANETs. The authentication scheme is proposed to enable anonymous and mutual authentication of vehicular nodes and their messages and meet VANET efficiency, security, and privacy requirements. The context-aware trust management scheme is proposed to evaluate the trustworthiness of the sender vehicles and their messages, and successfully detect malicious vehicles and their false/bogus messages and eliminate them from the network, thereby ensuring safe, secure, and efficient communications in VANETs. In contrast to existing trust schemes, the proposed framework can operate and adapt to various contexts/scenarios in VANETs while meeting all VANET security and privacy requirements. According to efficiency analysis and simulation results, the proposed framework outperforms the baseline schemes and demonstrates to be secure, effective, and robust for enhancing vehicular communication security.
The e-mobility infrastructure faces several challenges that hinder the general adoption of electric vehicles (EV). Indeed, the management system requires multiple actors to jointly act on different interdependent processes which makes it complex, time-consuming and inefficient. Moreover, the current state of the infrastructure raises several security and privacy concerns that render it non-compliant with security regulations and privacy laws. In this work, we propose a blockchain-based solution that allows a more efficient, secure and privacy-preserving management of the EV infrastructure. We used hybrid smart contracts and blockchain oracles to feed data to the blockchain in a secure and trusted manner.
This paper focuses on achieving high-level security in Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANET) by incorporating Blockchain technology-based Intrusion Detection systems (IDS). The existing works on MANET security focus on either security prevention or detection. Thus, the security level attained by the prior works is unable to cope with the increasing attacks. To resolve this main issue, this research paper introduces Lightweight Blockchain assisted Intrusion Detection System (LB-IDS) which jointly prevents and detects the attacks held on mobile networks. Initially, the network nodes are authenticated by a lightweight Blockchain-based Multi-Factor Authentication (LBMFA) scheme. This procedure prevents the malicious nodes entry to the network. Then, data packets are transmitted through the optimal route which is selected by Multi-Objective Strawberry Optimization (MOSO) algorithm. The collected data packets are fed into IDS which classifies the data into normal and malicious packets. For IDS, we proposed Deep Q-Learning (DQL) algorithm which takes actions by learning the environment. As the mitigation step, the Blockchain is updated with the trust value according to the data packet classification. For such continuous monitoring, K-Mode Clustering (KMC) algorithm is proposed. On the whole, the proposed work improves the network security in MANET through Prevention, Detection, and Mitigation. The results of the presented work attains better security level, packet delivery ratio (PDR), energy efficiency, delay, and detection accuracy.
With the enhanced interoperability of information among vehicles, the demand for collaborative sharing among vehicles increases. Based on blockchain, the classical consensus algorithms in collaborative IoV (Internet of Vehicle), such as PoW (Proof of Work), PoS (Proof of Stake), and DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake), only consider the node features, which is hard to adapt to the immediacy and flexibility of vehicles. On the other hand, classical consensus algorithms often require mass computing, which undoubtedly increases the communication overhead, resulting in the inability to achieve collaborative IoV under asymmetric networks. Therefore, proposing a low failure rate consensus algorithm that takes into account running time and energy consumption becomes a major challenge in IoV applications. This paper proposes an AI-enabled consensus algorithm with vehicle features, combining vehicle-based metrics and neural networks. First, we introduce vehicle-based metrics such as vehicle online time, performance, and behavior. Then, we propose an integral model and a hierarchical classification method, which combine with a BP neural network to obtain the optimal solution for interconnection. Among them, we also use Informer to predict the future online duration of vehicles, which effectively solves the situation that the primary node vehicle drops off in collaborative IoV. Finally, the experimentations show that the vehicle-based metrics eliminate the problem of the primary node vehicle being offline, which realizes the collaborative IoV considering vehicle features. Meanwhile, it reduces the vehicle network system delay and energy consumption.
With the rapid development of information and communication technology, vehicular AD hoc networks (VANETs) has attracted more and more attention. In order to provide traffic safety services, vehicles frequently share information related to road traffic, such as vehicle motion data and traffic flow data. Reliable key generation is the basis of VANET security system construction. Presently, most key generation schemes rely on a trusted third party, so there are security risks. Traditional key agreement protocols have high overhead, and is not suitable for the latency-sensitive requirements of VANET. The physical layer security technology extracts the fingerprint of the wireless channel and the identity of the device, and generates the key quickly and in real time without the third party distribution. A physical layer key generation scheme based on received signal strength (RSS) is proposed to realize Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) secure communications. First, a network model based on long short-term memory (LSTM) network and the Kalman filtering is proposed to effectively enhance the reciprocity of physical layer information in dynamic environment. Second, a lossless quantization scheme is proposed, which achieves a lower bit disagreement rate and a higher bit generation rate. Third, the inconsistent bits are corrected by fuzzy extractor, the confidentiality of the key exchange process is enhanced by zero knowledge proof, and the security of the key is improved by using hash function for privacy amplification. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed scheme has great improvements in data correlation, bit disagreement rate, bit generation rate and bit distribution randomness.
The emerging field of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has garnered significant attention due to its potential to revolutionize transportation and mobility. IoV enables the development of innovative services and applications that can enhance the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of transportation systems. However, ensuring secure and reliable communication among different components of an IoV system poses a critical challenge. This study proposes a blockchain-based communication framework for secure and trustworthy IoV applications. The framework utilizes blockchain technology’s decentralization and security features to create secure communication channels between IoV system components, including vehicles, infrastructure, and service providers. An identity management system is also integrated into the framework to authenticate and authorize users and devices, thereby preventing unauthorized access and data breaches. To assess the proposed framework’s effectiveness, real-world IoV scenarios were used to conduct experiments, and the results demonstrate that the framework can provide secure and trustworthy communication for IoV applications. The proposed blockchain-enabled communication framework provides a promising solution for addressing security and trust challenges in IoV communication systems.
Muhammad Umar Majigi, Ismaila Idris, Shafi’i Muhammad Abdulhamid, Andrew A. Uduimoh
The possibility of implementing advanced applications, such as improved driving safety, has increased with the rapid development of vehicular telematics, and existing vehicular services have been enriched through data sharing and analysis between vehicles. This research uses smart contracts and consortium blockchain zero knowledge proof to secure data sharing and storage in vehicular networks. The results indicate that, for message sizes (m), both data_ experiments _2 and 1 produce ciphertext of the same size 157 bits, with the exception of 'gnfuv-temp-exp1-55d487b85b-5g2xh,' which generates ciphertext of 156 bits with the lowest decryption time of 26,865ms and a small decrease in encryption time between 28,620ms and 28,162ms. the proposed model validation shows that the model performed better than the Advanced encryption standard in terms of ciphertext size, encryption time and decryption time in comparison and it satisfies the good and robust blockchain-based zero knowledge proof model for secure data sharing and storage for distributed VANET. The scheme achieves high levels of security while operating with reasonable efficiency, reliability and availability according to numerical results.
Hamza Sohail, Mahmood ul Hassan, M. A. Elmagzoub, Adel Rajab · 9 authors
A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a technique that uses vehicles with the ability to sense data from the environment and use it for their safety measures. Flooding is a commonly used term used for sending network packets. VANET may cause redundancy, delay, collision, and the incorrect receipt of the messages to their destination. Weather information is one of the most important types of information used for network control and provides an enhanced version of the network simulation environments. The network traffic delay and packet losses are the main problems identified inside the network. In this research, we propose a routing protocol which can transmit the weather forecasting information on demand based on source vehicle to destination vehicles, with the minimum number of hop counts, and provide significant control over network performance parameters. We propose a BBSF-based routing approach. The proposed technique effectively enhances the routing information and provides the secure and reliable service delivery of the network performance. The results taken from the network are based on hop count, network latency, network overhead, and packet delivery ratio. The results effectively show that the proposed technique is reliable in reducing the network latency, and that the hop count is minimized when transferring the weather information.
S. Balasubramani, Pamidi Trinesh Kumar, Nukala Rohith Ganesh
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an emerging technology that enables the real-time sharing of data between vehicles, drivers, and other components of the transportation system. IoV has the potential to improve the overall efficiency and safety of the transportation system. However, it also presents several security and privacy challenges that need to be addressed. Cyberattacks, data breaches, and unauthorized access are some of the significant concerns in the use of IoV. To address these challenges, we propose an optimized decentralized trust approach that uses the Ethereum blockchain to provide a secure and effective method for protecting IoV stream data. The proposed approach involves storing IoV data and necessary files in a SQL server connected to the Ethereum blockchain through a smart contract. The smart contract is used to validate authorized users and store the data in the blockchain network. The blockchain's decentralized nature ensures that the data is available to anyone with the hash address, while the smart contract enhances security by controlling who can access the data. The proposed approach is open-source and utilizes smart contract functionality, making it suitable for various applications. The proposed approach's key advantage is that it addresses security and privacy concerns in IoV data management by leveraging blockchain technology. By using the Ethereum blockchain, we can establish a secure and decentralized framework for data sharing and storage. Furthermore, the use of a smart contract ensures the validity and authenticity of transactions and ensures that only authorized users can access the data. The proposed approach can be used for a wide range of IoV applications, including traffic management, collision avoidance, and route planning.
As the high-mobility nature of the vehicles results in frequent leaving and joining the transportation network, real-time data must be collected and shared in a timely manner. In such a transportation network, malicious vehicles can disrupt services and create serious issues, such as deadlocks and accidents. The blockchain is a technology that ensures traceability, consistency, and security in transportation networks. In this study, we integrated edge computing and blockchain technology to improve the optimal utilization of resources, especially in terms of computing, communication, security, and storage. We propose a novel, edge-integrated, blockchain-based vehicle platoon security scheme. For the vehicle platoon, we developed the security architecture, implemented smart contracts for practical network scenarios in network simulator version 3, and integrated them with the simulation urban mobility traffic control interface API. We exhaustively simulated all the scenarios and analyzed the communication performance metrics, such as throughput, delay, and jitter, and the security performance metrics, such as mean squared error, communication, and computational cost. The performance results demonstrate that the developed scheme can solve security-related issues more effectively and efficiently in smart cities.
Ümit Cali, Murat Kuzlu, Onur Elma, Osman Gazi Güçlütürk · 6 authors
With the advancement of green energy technology and rising public and political acceptance, electric vehicles (EVs) have grown in popularity. Electric motors, batteries, and charging systems are considered major components of EVs. The electric power infrastructure has been designed to accommodate the needs of EVs, with an emphasis on bidirectional power flow to facilitate power exchange. Furthermore, the communication infrastructure has been enhanced to enable cars to communicate and exchange information with one another, also known as Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology. V2X is positioned to become a bigger and smarter system in the future of transportation, thanks to upcoming digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Distributed Ledger Technology, and the Internet of Things. However, like with any technology that includes data collection and sharing, there are issues with digital privacy and cybersecurity. This paper addresses these concerns by creating a multi-layer Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (CPSS) architecture to investigate possible privacy and cybersecurity risks associated with V2X. Using the CPSS paradigm, this research explores the interaction of EV infrastructure as a very critical part of the V2X ecosystem, digital privacy, and cybersecurity concerns.
Hui Xie, Jun Zheng, Teng He, Shengjun Wei · 6 authors
The advent of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm technology brings possibilities to help humans complete tasks in no man’s land, such as deserts and rainforests. However, UAV network faces many cyber threats, where attackers can impersonate legitimate entities or tamper with UAV task data. For identity security, most of the existing methods use centralized authentication schemes, which have a single point of failure problem. For data security, the existing methods only secure the task data in the ground system, ignoring the data security in the air network. Therefore, the existing methods are not suitable for ubiquitous UAV scenarios. Blockchain secures data security while eliminating the single point of failure problem, and has been widely used in distributed scenarios. In this article, to secure entity identity and task data, we propose a blockchain-supported secure multi-UAV task management scheme (B-UAVM). Specifically, a three-layer blockchain structure is constructed to secure multitasks, and achieve ubiquitous control of UAV formations. Besides, six types of blocks and three types of transactions are designed to achieve safe processing and storage of task data and entity information. Furthermore, an improved practical byzantine fault tolerance (IPBFT) consensus mechanism and a UAV-formation-action-considered ground station consensus mechanism (UFAGS) are introduced in the Server Network and Ground Control Network, respectively, to accelerate the consensus. The experimental results show that the number of transactions generated per second (TPS) of B-UAVM is about$0.5\times $and$3.7\times $of the existing method when the block size or the number of blockchain nodes increases, respectively.
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the way intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) operate in smart cities. By providing a secure and decentralized platform for data exchange and storage, blockchain can enhance the security, privacy, and interoperability of ITS systems. Blockchain technology can be used for various applications in ITS, including secure data exchange between vehicles, infrastructure, and service providers, smart contracts for autonomous vehicles, and decentralized marketplaces for transportation services. However, implementing blockchain in ITS comes with its own set of challenges, including scalability and high computational power requirements. Despite the challenges, blockchain technology offers significant opportunities for ITS in smart cities, enabling new business models and promoting innovation in transportation services. In this article, we study existing challenges, applications, and future requirements for ITS. We discuss the challenges of the ITS and their impact on smart cities. Blockchain-enabled applications are provided with performance analysis based on the critical parameters of ITS. We also derive the security requirements for future ITS. Finally, we provide some opportunities and possible research areas within the ITS to develop smart cities.
Emanuel Vieira, João Almeida, Joaquim Ferreira, Paulo Bartolomeu
Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) applications, enabled by vehicular communications and vehicle automation technologies, are set to increase traffic safety and efficiency. An important feature of CCAM is the potential to decide and coordinate maneuvers among automated vehicles in a more efficient and secure manner, when compared to human drivers. However, maneuver decision and coordination is a rather complex topic due to the multitude of possible maneuvers and the occasional cooperation failures, as caused by issues derived from the use of wireless communications in the vehicular ecosystem, like packet loss or even misbehaving entities. This work focuses on the latter problem by introducing a secure communication design for the decision of general cooperative maneuvers and the distributed storage of related data for accountability purposes using mechanisms based on distributed ledger technologies, while meeting user and data privacy requirements. We present the VERCO (VERifiable COoperation), a scalable geographical-based multi-layered blockchain architecture able to support the high volume of shared vehicular data in order to enhance the security and accountability of cooperative maneuvers, as well as potentially being able to support other vehicular services. To support this architecture, we also provide a performant communication protocol for the decision and negotiation of cooperative maneuvers, based on a new message: the Verifiable Cooperation Message (VCM). The architecture and communication protocol are analyzed and tested employing hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) simulations using two ETSI ITS standard compliant on-board units (OBUs) while deciding maneuvers in a lane-merging scenario. To test the scalability of the architecture a roadside unit (RSU) is put under different stress loads using a variable number of simulated vehicles in the same lane-merging scenario. Experimental results show the feasibility of the communication protocol, with an average delay of 34.68 ms, and the lightweightness of the proposed architecture, with an average overhead of only 2.62 ms for two vehicles and less than 6 ms for dozens of vehicles.
Wenbo Ruan, Jia Liu, Yuanfang Chen, M N Islam · 5 authors
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) enables vehicles to share data that help vehicles perceive the surrounding environment. However, vehicles can spread false information to other IoV nodes; this incorrect information misleads vehicles and causes confusion in traffic, therefore, a vehicular trust model is needed to check the trustworthiness of the message. To eliminate the spread of false information and detect malicious nodes, we propose a double-layer blockchain trust management (DLBTM) mechanism to objectively and accurately evaluate the trustworthiness of vehicle messages. The double-layer blockchain consists of the vehicle blockchain and the RSU blockchain. We also quantify the evaluation behavior of vehicles to show the trust value of the vehicle's historical behavior. Our DLBTM uses logistic regression to accurately compute the trust value of vehicles, and then predict the probability of vehicles providing satisfactory service to other nodes in the next stage. The simulation results show that our DLBTM can effectively identify malicious nodes, and over time, the system can recognize at least 90% of malicious nodes.
The exposure of the real location of vehicles in the positioning service may lead to the disclosure of the important information of users. There are few comprehensive studies on the privacy security and delay of the vehicle positioning service, and less consideration is given to the combination of satellite network, UAV network and ground network to ensure vehicle positioning service More reliable, longer lasting and more flexible. We consider the application of anonymous privacy protection technology to reduce the leakage risk of real vehicle location and the deployment delay, and proposes the location privacy protection architecture of the Internet of Vehicles under the Space-Air-Ground Integrated Network (SAGIN), roadside service units (RSU) act as ground receiving devices. We propose a fast clustering K-anonymity privacy-preserving algorithm to reduce the time complexity of the K-anonymity algorithm while the probability of the real vehicle location being found does not exceed 1/K, and proposing evaluation-rating combined trust model to solve the problems of non-trust of the requesting vehicle and the cooperative vehicle during the construction of the anonymous area of the K-anonymity algorithm. Applying blockchain technology to store vehicle location privacy data, distributed ledger and fast Byzantine fault tolerance consensus mechanisms ensure that stored data cannot be tampered with while speeding up deployment. Simulation experiments indicate that our scheme is better than some existing studies in terms of time delay and safety, and can identify malicious vehicles with fast speed and high accuracy.
Platooning technologies enable trucks to drive cooperatively and automatically, providing benefits including less fuel consumption, greater road capacity, and safety. To establish trust during dynamic platooning formation, ensure vehicular data integrity, and guard platoons against potential attackers in mixed fleet environments, verifying any given vehicle’s identity information before granting it access to join a platoon is pivotal. Besides, due to privacy concerns, truck owners may be reluctant to disclose private vehicular information, which can reveal their business data to untrusted third parties. To address these issues, this is the first study to propose an aggregated zero-knowledge proof and blockchain-empowered system for privacy-preserving identity verification in truck platooning. We provide the correctness proof and the security analysis of our proposed authentication scheme, highlighting its increased security and fast performance. The platooning formation procedure is re-designed to seamlessly incorporate the proposed authentication scheme, including the 1st catch-up and cooperative driving steps. The blockchain performs the role of verifier within the authentication scheme and stores platooning records on its digital ledger to guarantee data immutability and integrity. In addition, the proposed programmable access control policies enable truck companies to define who is allowed to access their platoon records. We implement the proposed system and perform extensive experiments on the Hyperledger platform. The results show that the blockchain can provide low latency and high throughput, the aggregated approach can offer a constant verification time of 500 milliseconds regardless of the number of proofs, and the platooning formation only takes seconds under different strategies. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of our design for use in real-world truck platooning.
With the rapid development of Internet of Vehicles (IoV), particularly the introduction of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), vehicles can efficiently share data with one another. However, edge computing nodes are vulnerable to various network attacks, posing security risks to data storage and sharing. Moreover, the presence of abnormal vehicles during the sharing process poses significant security threats to the entire network. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel reputation management scheme, which proposes an improved multi-source multi-weight subjective logic algorithm. This algorithm fuses the direct and indirect opinion feedback of nodes through the subjective logic trust model while considering factors such as event validity, familiarity, timeliness, and trajectory similarity. Vehicle reputation values are periodically updated, and abnormal vehicles are identified through reputation thresholds. Finally, blockchain technology is employed to ensure the security of data storage and sharing. By analyzing real vehicle trajectory datasets, the algorithm is proven to effectively improve the differentiation and detection rate of abnormal vehicles.