Due to the mobility of devices, device-to-device (D2D) communication is a promising fifth-generation (5G) technology in dynamic environments for improving message transmission efficiency for group communication. Additionally, all services in an ad hoc network are current Vehicle Ad Hoc Network (VANET) applications. Therefore, D2D communication has been introduced in ad hoc environments to reduce latency during vehicle conversations, such as autonomous vehicle solutions and drone fleet management for cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) modules and Internet of Drones (IoDs) networks. However, providing secure and effective group communication is an urgent challenge. To solve these problems, we propose a dynamic group management solution based on distributed ledger technology. This study demonstrates that a distributed ledger-based hierarchical architecture for dynamic group management is faster and more adaptable without compromising security and performance. Furthermore, the proposed method can facilitate the transfer of direct communication data without a centralized database, thereby reducing the chance of a single point of failure. In addition, the research was tested by a third party that has established close cooperation with world-leading automotive electronics suppliers in Taiwan.
In the aftermath of a disaster, natural or man-made, successful emergency management operations vitally depend on reliable communication infrastructures. However, large-scale extreme events may dismantle telecommunication infrastructures and impair rescue operations. The current state of practice to maintain communication when infrastructures are not operable mostly focuses on using temporary infrastructures including mobile telecom towers. However, these centralized solutions heavily depend on equipment that may not be readily available. To address this issue, this paper aims to create theoretical foundations for, and empirically examine the performance of, a novel decentralized and infrastructure-less communication system that uses an ad hoc mobile network, distributed ledger and Blockchain technology, and an all-to-all broadcasting routing algorithm. When the proposed communication system is used, mobile devices in the affected area connect with each other through device-to-device Wi-Fi Direct, create a temporary mobile ad hoc network, and share spatial information through the stepwise routing algorithm and distributed ledgers. At the end of this process, each device in the network will have spatial information of all available devices in the area. Therefore, when first responders arrive in the affected area, they can locate all devices and have access to all collected information immediately through a direct connection to only one device in the area. The outcomes of this study will fundamentally transform the emergency communication solutions and can significantly shorten the duration of rescue operations by helping first responders locate citizens in the affected area faster and more efficiently.
Fatemeh Ghovanlooy Ghajar, Javad Salimi Sratakhti, Axel Sikora
With many advances in sensor technology and the Internet of Things, Vehicle Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is becoming a new generation. VANET’s current technical challenges are deploying decentralized architecture and protecting privacy. Because Blockchain features are decentralized, distributed, mass storage, and non-manipulation features, this paper designs a new decentralized architecture using Blockchain technology called Blockchain-based VANET. Blockchain-based VANET can effectively resolve centralized problems and mutual distrust between VANET units. To achieve this, it is needed to provide scalability on the blockchain to run for VANET. In this system, our focus is on the reliability of incoming messages on the network. Vehicles check the validity of the received messages using the proposed Bayesian formula for trust management system and some information saved in the Blockchain. Then, based on the validation result, the vehicle computes a rate for each message type and message source vehicle. Vehicles upload the computed rates to Roadside Units (RSUs) in order to calculate the net reliability value. Finally, RSUs using a sharding consensus mechanism generate blocks, including the net reliability value as a transaction. In this system, all RSUs collaboratively maintain the latest updated Blockchain. Our experimental results show that the proposed system is effective, scalable and dependable in data gathering, computing, organization, and retrieval of trust values in VANET.
In a perfect world, coordination and cooperation across distributed autonomous systems would be a trivial task. However, incomplete information, malicious actors and real-world conditions can provide challenges which bring the trust-worthiness of participants into question. In this work-in-progress paper, we propose the novel use of Distributed Ledger Technologies with a particular focus on IOTA to provide a trust overlay governing information interchange across autonomous vehicles. This paper outlines a number of scenarios where information interchange could provide useful data for decision making, defines how trust can be useful in this context, and provides use cases which call for evaluating the trustworthiness of the message. The paper also outlines the architecture of an IOTA-based private tangle integrated with vehicle simulation software which facilitates the evaluation of various scenarios.
The rapid development of the automotive Industrial Internet of Things requires secure networking infrastructure toward digitalization. Cybertwin (CT) is a next-generation networking architecture that serves as a communication, and digital asset owner, and can make the Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) network flexible and secure. However, CT itself can publish end users’ digital assets to other entities as a service, making data security and privacy major obstacles in the realization of V2X applications. Motivated from the aforementioned discussion, this article presents BDTwin, a blockchain and deep-learning-based integrated framework to enhance security and privacy in CT-driven V2X applications. Specifically, a blockchain scheme is designed to ensure secure communication among vehicles, roadside units, CT-edge server, and cloud server using a smart contract-based enhance-Proof-of-Work (ePoW) and Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP)-based verification process. Smart contracts are used to enforce rules and regulations that govern the behavior of V2X entities in a nondeniable and automated manner. In a deep-learning scheme, an autoregressive-deep variational autoencoder model is combined with attention-based bidirectional long short-term memory (A-BLSTM) for automatic feature extraction and attack detection by analyzing CT-edge servers data in a V2X environment. Security analysis and experimental results using two different sources, ToN-IoT and CICIDS-2017 show the superiority of the proposed BDTwin framework over some baseline and recent state-of-the-art techniques.
Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are introduced to improve individuals’ quality of life by offering a wide range of services. They collect a huge amount of data and exchange them with each other and the infrastructure. The collected data usually includes sensitive information about the users and the surrounding environment. Therefore, data security and privacy are among the main challenges in this industry. Blockchain, an emerging distributed ledger, has been considered by the research community as a potential solution for enhancing data security, integrity, and transparency in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). However, despite the emphasis of governments on the transparency of personal data protection practices, CAV stakeholders have not been successful in communicating appropriate information with the end users regarding the procedure of collecting, storing, and processing their personal data, as well as the data ownership. This article provides a vision of the opportunities and challenges of adopting blockchain in ITS from the “data transparency” and “privacy” perspective. The main aim is to answer the following questions: (1) Considering the amount of personal data collected by the CAVs, such as location, how would the integration of blockchain technology affect transparency , fairness , and lawfulness of personal data processing concerning the data subjects (as this is one of the main principles in the existing data protection regulations)? (2) How can the trade-off between transparency and privacy be addressed in blockchain-based ITS use cases?
The Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) is a communication environment that consists of various interconnected sensing devices, instruments, and other intelligent vehicles and applications connected. However, since intelligent devices on the IoVs communicate through insecure communication methods, Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) may be vulnerable to different types of attacks. Therefore, it is essential to deploy a secure access control solution in the VANET environment, one of the critical security services to protect VANET. In this article, we propose a novel access control scheme for blockchain-based VANET communication. We provide detailed information about the network model and threat model required to design our scheme. The security analysis of the network shows its ability to resist various possible attacks. Furthermore, we introduce other intelligent devices to our network and protect their privacy from prying eyes. We also compared other relevant competing programs and found that our performance is better than these competitive programs. Therefore, our solution is suitable for access control in a blockchain-based VANET environment.
Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) presents promising opportunities for vehicle to everything (V2X) applications, wherein authentication acts as the cornerstone to realize trustworthy vehicular context and to support advanced applications. However, existing authentication schemes mainly depend on centralized servers with both security and privacy issues. In this paper, we propose a CyberTwin (CT) empowered blockchain framework for authentication, namely CyberChain, to reduce both the communication and storage cost while maintaining vehicular privacy. By designing a blockchain system in the cyberspace, we decouple the consensus process from the physical world, so that the operation cost of blockchain can be reduced. A Privacy-Preserving Parallel Pedersen Commitment (P4C) algorithm is designed to protect the privacy of vehicles and accelerate the authentication process. To further enhance the operation efficiency of CyberChain, we propose a Diffused Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (DPBFT) mechanism to reach consensus in the cyberspace that can reduce consensus latency. The proposed cyberchain framework and the associated mechanisms are evaluated by qualitative analysis and simulations. The evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed cyberchain based framework significantly improves the authentication performance in terms of authentication latency, privacy, communication overhead and storage cost.
The development of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) has brought many advantages to facilitate the deployment of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). However, without proper protection, VANETs can be vulnerable to severe cyber-attacks. This paper explores the threats to the VANETs and proposes a security scheme for VANETs with a Blockchain (VNB). Furthermore, the proposed VNB with Ethereum was developed. With a graphical user interface, experiments were conducted. For ad hoc communications, a vehicle can randomly select another vehicle, and VNB will authenticate the selected vehicle with the Blockchain and Trusted Authority (TA). Preliminary test results successfully proved that Blockchain can be the key technology to mitigate the security threats to VANETs.
Mehrdad Salimitari, Mohsen Joneidi, Yaser P. Fallah
As the backbone of the connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) enable a variety of applications for sharing traffic information and road safety messages. However, the possibility of malicious activity in such an untrusted environment necessitates evaluating the credibility of sent messages by vehicles. In this article, we put forward a blockchain-based authentication and trust management system for vehicular networks. This architecture incorporates multiple local blockchains for enabling distributed V2X communication and a global trust score blockchain for evaluating the credibility of sent messages from vehicles as illustrated in the teaser figure. To empower our proposed architecture, we propose a novel Dual Consensus Method (DCM) consisted of local consensus for event blockchains and global consensus for the trust score blockchain. DCM enables real-time and concurrent operation of different blockchains in our architecture. We employ Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) consensus method for the global consensus. For the local consensus, we propose a new consensus method named Restricted Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (RPBFT). Through our design, a vehicle's information for decision-making about an event is not limited to the neighboring vehicles and RSUs. It has access to both recent data regarding an event and vehicles' trust scores in a fully decentralized and private fashion. Performance evaluation of our proposed method reveals its capability to calculate and store trust sores via secure, decentralized, and real-time operation.
Elnaz Rabieinejad, Abbas Yazdinejad, Ali Dehghantanha, Reza M. Parizi · 5 authors
In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as drones, smartphones, and smart vehicles have increased, and Smart Vehicular Networks (SVNs) have formed. SVN are one of the vital components in smart cities and improves their functionality and efficiency. Despite the many applications that SVN have shown, they have security vulnerabilities issues, and there are many reports of them being hacked. Most attacks on SVN occur due to wireless communications and information sharing between vehicles. Also, due to the communication among vehicles, failures can spread from the victim device to the entire network and cause widespread damages. SVN features include mobility, decentralization, resource constraints that make traditional security solutions unsuitable for it. We propose a secure framework using blockchain and Deep Neural networks (DNN) to address these challenges. In this framework, we consider cluster-based architecture that vehicles in each cluster can securely communicate using the blockchain. Also, DNN is adopted to detect abnormal vehicles that have been attacked using their network traffic analysis in each zone. We assess blockchain impacts on throughput using different miners with multiple block sizes in our proposed framework. The experimental result indicates the throughput improvement with an increase in miners and block size. In addition, we evaluated the DNN performance for abnormal vehicle detection, which represents 99.82% in terms of accuracy.
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has become an indispensable technology to bridge vehicles, persons and infrastructures, and is promising to make our cities smarter and more connected. It enables vehicles to exchange vehicular data (e.g., GPS, sensors, and brakes) with different entities nearby. However, sharing these vehicular data over the air raises concerns about identity privacy leakage. Besides, the centralized architecture adopted in existing IoV systems is fragile to single point of failure and malicious attacks. With the emergence of blockchain technology, it has the chance to solve these problems due to its features of tamper-proof, traceability and decentralization. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving vehicular data sharing framework based on blockchain. In particular, we design an anonymous and auditable data sharing scheme using Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) technol-ogy so as to protect the identity privacy of vehicles while preserving the vehicular data auditability for Trusted Authorities (TAs). In response to high mobility of vehicles, we design an efficient multi-sharding protocol to decrease blockchain communication costs without compromising the blockchain security. We implement a prototype of our framework and conduct extensive experiments and simulations on it. Evaluation and analysis results indicate that our framework can not only strengthen system security and data privacy, but also increase the data authenticity verification efficiency by 5x comparing to existing privacy-preserving schemes.
Internet of Things (IoT) can be conveniently de-ployed while empowering various applications, where the IoT nodes can form clusters to finish certain missions collectively. In this paper, we propose to employ unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assist the IoT data collection with blockchain-based security provisioning, towards efficient and safeguarded IoT operations. In particular, a blockchain with proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is constructed among the UAVs with the collected IoT data. Correspondingly, we optimize the IoT communication and the UAV deployment for the maximum blockchain throughput considering the PoS procedure. The problem is solved with a deep deterministic policy gradient-based approach, where the power allocation is obtained with closed-form solutions and the UAV deployment is learned with actor-critic networks. Simulation results are provided to show the deployment and performance, corroborating the effectiveness of our proposal.
Yuntao Wang, Zhou Su, Jianbing Ni, Ning Zhang · 5 authors
The terrestrial networks face the challenges of severe cost inefficiency and low feasibility to provide seamless services anytime and anywhere, especially in the extreme or hotspot areas (e.g., disaster areas, mountains, and oceans) due to limited service coverage and capacity. The integration of multi-dimensional networks consisting of space, air, and ground layers is expected to provide solutions in delivering cost-effective and ubiquitous Internet of things (IoT) services for billions of users and interconnected smart devices. Autonomous data collection, exchange, and processing across different network segments with minimal human interventions in space-air-ground IoT (SAG-IoT) can bring great convenience to consumers, however, it also suffers new attacks from intruders. Severe privacy invasion, reliability issues, and security breaches of SAG-IoT can hinder its wide deployment. The emerging blockchain holds great potentials to address the security concerns in SAG-IoT, thanks to its prominent features of decentralization, transparency, immutability, traceability, and auditability. Despite of the benefits of blockchain-empowered SAG-IoT, there exist a series of fundamental challenges in terms of efficiency and regulation due to the intrinsic characteristics of SAG-IoT (e.g., heterogeneity, time-variability, and poor interoperability) and the limitations of existing blockchain approaches (e.g., capacity and scalability). This article presents a comprehensive survey of the integration of blockchain technologies for securing SAG-IoT applications. Specifically, we first discuss the architecture, characteristics, and security threats of SAG-IoT systems. Then, we concentrate on the promising blockchain-based solutions for SAG-IoT security. Next, we discuss the critical challenges when integrating blockchain in SAG-IoT security services and review the state-of-the-art solutions. We further investigate the opportunities of blockchain in artificial intelligence and beyond 5G networks and provide open research directions for building future blockchain-empowered SAG-IoT systems.
Vehicles on the road, where an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is built, can share a lot of traffic information and drive more safely and efficiently through data sharing. Since incorrect information misleads vehicles and causes confusion in traffic, a vehicular trust model is needed to check the message’s trustworthiness while considering the vehicle’s properties and protecting its privacy. In this paper, we proposed a two layered blockchain-based reputation system, which consists of a local one-day message blockchain and a global vehicle reputation blockchain. It can administrate the reputation score securely and preserve the vehicle’s partial privacy. The proposed model efficiently manages local traffic information through the local one-day blockchain, reducing the memory overhead of vehicles. As the vehicle’s actual identity and activities in other areas are hidden by using one-time public keys, partial privacy of the vehicle is preserved. According to the activity of the vehicle, the vehicle’s reputation score is updated and stored permanently in the global reputation blockchain. We also suggested the location-based practical byzantine fault tolerance (LPBFT), a new consensus algorithm for fast block generating. The LPBFT lowers message propagation time through location-based primary node selection and is about 1.4 times faster than existing PBFT. The simulation results show the efficiency and the feasibility of LPBFT and our proposed protocol.
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has emerged as an advancement over the traditional Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) towards achieving a more efficient intelligent transportation system that is capable of providing various intelligent services and supporting different applications for the drivers and passengers on roads. In order for the IoV and VANETs environments to be able to offer such beneficial road services, huge amounts of data are generated and exchanged among the different communicated entities in these vehicular networks wirelessly via open channels, which could attract the adversaries and threaten the network with several possible types of security attacks. In this survey, we target the authentication part of the security system while highlighting the efficiency of blockchains in the IoV and VANETs environments. First, a detailed background on IoV and blockchain is provided, followed by a wide range of security requirements, challenges, and possible attacks in vehicular networks. Then, a more focused review is provided on the recent blockchain-based authentication schemes in IoV and VANETs with a detailed comparative study in terms of techniques used, network models, evaluation tools, and attacks counteracted. Lastly, some future challenges for IoV security are discussed that are necessary to be addressed in the upcoming research.
The automobile sector is experiencing tremendous changes with the proliferation of vehicular communications, intelligent transport systems, and self-contained motor vehicles during the last decade. Recent improvements in software, hardware, and communication system to create different applications and standards make these technologies conceivable. Today, new technologies are attached to vehicles that recognize and enhance the driving experience of possible drive concerns. The integration of vehicles involves three main components: sensors, information systems, and communication systems to develop a connected vehicle network. Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication is employed within a connected network to ease traffic congestion and enhance passenger protection. There exist many issues like security of vehicles, communication interfaces and stored data. Therefore, a Blockchain-enabled Secure Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication System (BSVCS) has been proposed to provide security to the communication interfaces for connected vehicles. Vehicles can communicate directly (for short-range) or via a cellular connection (for long-range) using C-V2X technology. It can also contribute to authoritative management to store the key securely and the process of its generation. A 2-step authentication process (2-SAP) has been introduced to identify a genuine user and to detect any unauthorized user. The proposed system can resolve the security issues such as no-authentication, broadcasting, the securities arbitration rule, and cybersecurity in the V2V communication system. It also secures vehicle security and user privacy in the V2V communication system.
In this paper, I present B-DRIVE—a blockchain-based distributed IoT (Internet of Things) network for smart urban transportation. The network is designed to connect a large fleet of IoT devices, installed on various vehicles and roadside infrastructures, to distributed data storage centers, called as Full-Nodes, to log and disseminate sensor generated data. It connects devices from around the city to multiple Full-Nodes to log timestamped data into the blockchain. These sensors vary from GPS (Global Positioning System), air quality meter, gyrometer to speed cameras in order to facilitate efficient urban mobility. The three identified hardware layers that comprise the network are the IoT layer, Storage layer, and User layer. They consist of Moving/Static-Nodes, Full-Nodes, and Smart devices, respectively. The Moving/Static-Nodes are primarily made up of moving vehicles and road-side infrastructures, respectively, thus acting as various data sources. Whereas, Full-Nodes and Smart devices are institutions and mobile phones, acting as data handler/disseminator and navigator/data visualizer, respectively. The data, or data blocks, received by Full-Nodes get appended into Full and Running-Blockchain, meant for specific purposes. The network is designed to be free from any block mining activity. It provides open access to anonymous sensor data to end-users, especially scientists, policy-makers and entrepreneurs, to develop innovative urban transportation solutions. It is believed that a system like B-DRIVE, along with existing VANETs (Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks), is capable of answering some of the current urban transportation issues around traffic congestion, navigation, and vehicle parking. Other applications of blockchain data could vary from user activity mapping to VGI (volunteered geographic information) data quality assessment. Two identified limitations of the presented architecture are the low processing power of current IoT devices and the lack of urban IoT infrastructure.
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) technology has advanced during the past years, and it is now used for several applications that require vehicles to exchange real-time data, such as in traffic information management. Traditionally, road traffic information has been collected using on-site sensors. However, crowd-sourcing traffic information from onboard sensors or smartphones has become a viable alternative. State-of-the-art solutions currently follow a centralized model where only the service provider has complete access to the collected traffic data and represent a single point of failure and trust. In this paper, we propose GOLIATH, a blockchain-based decentralized framework that runs on the In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system to collect real-time information exchanged between the network's participants. Our approach mitigates the limitations of existing crowd-sourcing centralized solutions by guaranteeing trusted information collection and exchange, fully exploiting the intrinsic distributed nature of vehicles. We demonstrate its feasibility in the context of vehicle positioning and traffic information management. Each vehicle participating in the decentralized network shares its position and neighbors' ones in the form of a transaction recorded on the ledger, which uses a novel consensus mechanism to validate it. We design the consensus mechanism resilient against a realistic set of adversaries that aim to tamper or disable the communication. We evaluate the proposed framework in a simulated (but realistic) environment, which considers different threats and allows showing its robustness and safety properties.