As autonomous vehicles fill the roads and more manufacturers join the trend, the need for a unified communication protocol grows. Current paradigms in vehicle-to-vehicle communication are too slow to provide accurate and meaningful traffic data in a timely fashion, and it is difficult to trust that incoming data is correct without an authoritative server verifying the sender's identity. This paper introduces a protocol for peer-to-peer exchanges of positional data that determines the trust level of a particular message by comparing matching object data hashes. Similar in concept to non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs, the design retains the privacy and anonymity of senders and is relatively fast compared to certificate-based solutions under a reasonable traffic load. Our preliminary experiment shows promising results, with much faster runtimes compared to similar cryptographic solutions. Although the current implementation is still rough around the edges, the basic design can provide the groundwork for future paradigms in inter-vehicular communication without depending on expensive cryptographic operations performed on special or more powerful hardware. This opens doors for protocols that can be run on current vehicles without requiring the collective processing power of all vehicles to increase.
Consensus is one of the most important issues of a blockchain system because it is a necessary process to reach an agreement between a group of separated nodes that do not trust each other in a decentralized framework. Most existing blockchain consensus works assume that the time of block propagation among separated nodes during the consensus process is ignorable, i.e., a block always successfully reaches every participating node during a period of time that is far shorter than the mining time. However, when blockchain is used in vehicularad hocnetworks (VANETs), the block propagation time is no longer negligible since the dynamic connectivity of the moving nodes in a wireless environment brings opportunistic communication to blockchain consensus. In this article, we study the impact of mobility on block propagation under the single-chain structure in VANET. Specifically, we investigate the dynamics of block propagation from the macroscopic view and derive the closed-form expression of the single-block propagation time. Then, we characterize the blockchain forking as the multiblock competitive propagation. In this way, an approximate result on multiblock propagation time is discussed. An interesting finding is that higher mobility and more moving vehicles can speed up the block propagation. In addition, we also discover that distinct propagation capabilities of moving nodes contribute to the forking reduction in the blockchain consensus.
Smart cities provide citizens with smart and advanced services to improve their quality of life. However, it has been observed that the collection, storage, processing, and analysis of heterogeneous data that are usually borne by citizens will bear certain difficulties. The development of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, social media, and other Industry 4.0 influencers pushed technology into a smart society’s framework, bringing potential vulnerabilities to sensor data, services, and smart city applications. These vulnerabilities lead to data security problems. We propose a decentralized data management system for smart and secure transportation that uses blockchain and the Internet of Things in a sustainable smart city environment to solve the data vulnerability problem. A smart transportation mobility system demands creating an interconnected transit system to ensure flexibility and efficiency. This article introduces prior knowledge and then provides a Hyperledger Fabric-based data architecture that supports a secure, trusted, smart transportation system. The simulation results show the balance between the blockchain mining time and the number of blocks created. We also use the average transaction delay evaluation model to evaluate the model and to test the proposed system’s performance. The system will address residents’ and authorities’ security challenges of the transportation system in smart, sustainable cities and lead to better governance.
Recent advancements in embedded sensing system, wireless communication technologies, big data, and artificial intelligence have fueled the development of Internet of Vehicles (IoV), where vehicles, road side unit (RSUs), and smart devices seamlessly interact with each other to enable the gathering and sharing of information on vehicles, roads, and their surrounds. As a fundamental component of IoV, vehicular networks (VANETs) are playing a critical role in processing, computing, and sharing travel-related information, which can help vehicles timely be aware of traffic situation and finally improve road safety and travel experience. However, due to the unique characteristics of vehicles, such as high mobility and sparse deployment making neighbor vehicles unacquainted and unknown to each other, VANETs are facing the challenge of evaluating the credibility of road safety messages. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based trust management system using multi-criteria decisionmaking model, also referred to as TrustBlockMCDM, in VANETs. In the TrustBlockMCDM, each vehicle evaluates the credibility of received road safety message and generates the trust value of message originator. Due to the limited storage capacity, each vehicle periodically uploads the trust value to a nearby RSU. After receiving various trust values from vehicles, the RSU calculates the reputation value of message originator of road safety message using multi-criteria decision-making model, packs the reputation value into a block, and competes to add the block into blockchain. We evaluate the proposed TrustBlockMCDMapproach through simulation experiments using OMNeT++ and compare its performance with prior blockchain-based decentralized trust management approach. The simulation results indicate that the proposed TrustBlockMCDMapproach can not only improve fictitious message detection rate and malicious vehicle detection rate, but also can increase the number of dropped fictitious messages.
Contribution au système de transport intelligent : sécurité des communications dans les réseaux Ad hoc véhiculaires Les systèmes de transport intelligents (ITS) sont un organe vital de l'évolution du secteur du transport routier et constituent l'une des principales étapes du mouvement vers l'automatisation des véhicules. Ces systèmes utilisent des technologies permettant aux véhicules de communiquer entre eux ou avec l'infrastructure routière. En augmentant la qualité et la fiabilité des informations, les STI peuvent améliorer la sécurité routière et l'efficacité du trafic, à condition que la cybersécurité et la protection des données soient assurées.Les réseaux ad hoc de véhicules (VANET) sont une projection des ITS et sont devenus un domaine de recherche important ces dernières années. Étant de nature ad hoc et ayant une mobilité élevée comme caractéristique principale, les VANET impliquent une topologie très dynamique, ce qui signifie que la plupart des protocoles de routage dédiés aux réseaux mobiles ad hoc (MANET) nécessitent des changements remarquables pour être adéquats pour les VANET.L'objectif principal de cette thèse est d'améliorer les performances des entités physiques et des communications au sein d'un ITS en termes de sécurité. Nous nous concentrons sur la fiabilité, la connectivité et l'attaque du trou noir. Nous étudions et proposons des solutions techniques à partir de la couche réseau qui jouent un rôle fondamental dans l'atténuation des défis créés par la nature de l'environnement véhiculaire.Principalement, nos contributions sont de trois ordres. Premièrement, nous considérons les efforts visant à améliorer la fiabilité des communications dans les réseaux de véhicules. Ces efforts sont représentés par des protocoles proposés visant à assurer la livraison des messages au (x) destinataire (s). En nous concentrant sur les applications de sécurité, nous nous concentrons sur l'architecture de communication ETSI ITS, en appliquant la méthodologie Threat Vulnerability Risk Assessment (TVRA). Les résultats de notre analyse sont une liste de vulnérabilités avec leur niveau de risque de gravité. Deuxièmement, nous proposons le protocole FT-OLSR (Fuzzy Trust Optimized Link State Routing), qui est une nouvelle extension de sécurité du protocole OLSR existant. FT-OLSR est basé sur l'échange de messages de contrôle avec des voisins à un bond pour permettre à chaque véhicule de calculer le niveau de confiance de ses voisins en utilisant la logique floue. Enfin, nous proposons un système de gestion de la confiance décentralisé basé sur la blockchain. Ce système est basé sur le protocole FT-OLSR, qui utilise les messages de routage échangés (HELLO, TC) dans VANET, pour calculer les valeurs de confiance, puis détecter les véhicules du trou noir. Dans le schéma proposé, une fois que l'attaquant est identifié, il est isolé de la communication en partageant ces informations en toute sécurité sur le réseau à l'aide de la blockchain. En raison des ressources limitées des VANET, le modèle Proof-of-Trust (PoT) est inséré dans le FT-OLSR, au lieu d'utiliser Proof-of-Work ou Proof-of-Stake, dans lequel l'enjeu correspond à la valeur de confiance de chaque nœud mobile. L'algorithme de consensus PoT est utilisé pour élire les validateurs. Une fois qu'un attaquant est détecté, le validateur confirme l'intégrité du rapport et crée un bloc contenant les informations des attaquants. Le bloc est diffusé sur le réseau et ajouté à la blockchain locale de chaque véhicule. Par conséquent, si le même attaquant tente de communiquer à n'importe quel endroit du réseau, une seule recherche de la blockchain peut isoler l'attaquant.
Matthew Tsao, Kaidi Yang, Stephen Zoepf, Marco Pavone
The era of big data has brought with it a richer understanding of user behavior through massive datasets, which can help organizations optimize the quality of their services. In the context of transportation research, mobility data can provide municipal authorities (MAs) with insights on how to operate, regulate, or improve the transportation network. Mobility data, however, may contain sensitive information about end users and trade secrets of mobility providers (MPs). Due to this data privacy concern, MPs may be reluctant to contribute their datasets to MA. Using ideas from cryptography, we propose an interactive protocol between an MA and an MP, in which MA obtains insights from mobility data without MP having to reveal its trade secrets or sensitive data of its users. This is accomplished in two steps: 1) a commitment step and 2) a computation step. In the first step, Merkle commitments and aggregated traffic measurements are used to generate a cryptographic commitment. In the second step, MP extracts insights from the data and sends them to MA. Using the commitment and zero-knowledge proofs, MA can certify that the information received from MP is accurate, without needing to directly inspect the mobility data. We also present a differentially private version of the protocol that is suitable for the large query regime. The protocol is verifiable for both MA and MP in the sense that dishonesty from one party can be detected by the other. The protocol can be readily extended to the more general setting with multiple MPs via secure multiparty computation.
Le Xia, Yao Sun, Mohammad Rafiq Swash, Lina Mohjazi · 6 authors
Securing safe driving for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) continues to be a widespread concern, despite various sophisticated functions delivered by artificial intelligence for in-vehicle devices. Diverse malicious network attacks are ubiquitous, along with the worldwide implementation of the Internet of Vehicles, which exposes a range of reliability and privacy threats for managing data in CAV networks. Combined with the fact that the capability of existing CAVs in handling intensive computation tasks is limited, this implies a need for designing an efficient assessment system to guarantee autonomous driving safety without compromising data security. In this article we propose a novel framework, namely Blockchain-enabled intElligent Safe-driving assessmenT (BEST), which offers a smart and reliable approach for conducting safe driving supervision while protecting vehicular information. Specifically, a promising solution that exploits a long short-term memory model is introduced to assess the safety level of the moving CAVs. Then we investigate how a distributed blockchain obtains adequate trustworthiness and robustness for CAV data by adopting a byzantine fault tolerance-based delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate that our presented BEST gains better data credibility with a higher prediction accuracy for vehicular safety assessment when compared with existing schemes. Finally, we discuss several open challenges that need to be addressed in future CAV networks.
Modern vehicles are no longer simply mechanical devices. Connectivity between the vehicular network and the outside world has widened the security holes that hackers can use to exploit a vehicular network. Controller Area Network (CAN), FlexRay, and automotive Ethernet are popular protocols for in-vehicle networks (IVNs) and will stay in the industry for many more years. However, these protocols were not designed with security in mind. They have several vulnerabilities, such as lack of message authentication, lack of message encryption, and an ID-based arbitration mechanism for contention resolution. Adversaries can use these vulnerabilities to launch sophisticated attacks that may lead to loss of life and damage to property. Thus, the security of the vehicles should be handled carefully. In this paper, we investigate the security vulnerabilities with in-vehicle network protocols such as CAN, automotive Ethernet, and FlexRay. A comprehensive survey on security attacks launched against in-vehicle networks is presented along with countermeasures adopted by various researchers. Various algorithms have been proposed in the past for intrusion detection in IVNs. However, those approaches have several limitations that need special attention from the research community. Blockchain is a good approach to solving the existing security issues in IVNs, and we suggest a way to improve IVN security based on a hybrid blockchain.
Abstract Blockchain technology has completely changed the area of cryptocurrency with a Peer-to-Peer system named Bitcoin. It can provide a distributed, transparent and highly confidential database by recording immutable transactions. Currently, the technique has obtained great research interest on other areas, including the Internet of vehicles (IoVs). In order to solve some centralized problems and improve the architecture of the IoVs, the blockchain technology is utilized to build a decentralized and secure vehicular environment. In this survey, we aim to construct a comprehensive analysis on the applications of blockchain in the IoV. This paper starts with the introduction of the IoVs and the blockchain. Additionally, some existing surveys on the blockchain enabled IoVs are reviewed. Besides, the combination of the blockchain technology and the IoVs is analyzed from seven aspects to describe how the blockchain is implemented in the IoVs. Finally, the future research directions related to the integration are highlighted.
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) engages all the components of vehicular environment from vehicle to infrastructure not only to enhance driving experience and safety but also to facilitate computation demands of IoV based applications. Due to the increasing computation demands of such applications it is difficult to facilitate vehicular environment with the existing infrastructure. However, the computing capabilities of underutilized vehicles can be used through task offloading. Therefore, it is crucial to incorporate such environment with trusted collaborative communication. Blockchain technology is gaining popularity in this regard but it is computationally expensive and high computation leads to more energy consumption. In other words, there is a trade-off between energy consumption and trusted communication. This article presents a brief literature review and a performance evaluation of earlier published fog node selection mechanism highlighting the importance of infrastructure and the energy consumption caused by the blockchain technology. The results demonstrate that it is more feasible to implement blockchain at the existing infrastructure avoiding the burden on the vehicle itself.
In the vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), vehicles share content with other vehicles and roadside units (RSU) to improve traffic efficiency. However, the vehicles and RSUs are not always credible. If they have malicious behavior, sharing false information put lives in danger. To address these security challenges, we propose a content sharing management method based on blockchain in VANETs. Specifically, we propose a hybrid trust model to evaluate the credibility of content based on the vehicle entity and interactive data. We deploy practical Byzantine fault tolerates (PBFT) consensus protocol based on the interaction frequency between RSUs and vehicles. The higher the interaction frequency, the more likely the RSU is to gain the right to package the block. In this way, RSUs and vehicles actively participate in the network, and achieve the content sharing honestly and effectively. We conduct extensive experiments, which demonstrate the implementation feasibility of proposed mechanisms.
Muhammad Firdaus, Sandi Rahmadika, Kyung-Hyune Rhee
The emergence of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) aims to facilitate the next generation of intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications by combining smart vehicles and the internet to improve traffic safety and efficiency. On the other hand, mobile edge computing (MEC) technology provides enormous storage resources with powerful computing on the edge networks. Hence, the idea of IoV edge computing (IoVEC) networks has grown to be an assuring paradigm with various opportunities to advance massive data storage, data sharing, and computing processing close to vehicles. However, the participant's vehicle may be unwilling to share their data since the data-sharing system still relies on a centralized server approach with the potential risk of data leakage and privacy security. In addition, vehicles have difficulty evaluating the credibility of the messages they received because of untrusted environments. To address these challenges, we propose consortium blockchain and smart contracts to accomplish a decentralized trusted data sharing management system in IoVEC. This system allows vehicles to validate the credibility of messages from their neighboring by generating a reputation rating. Moreover, the incentive mechanism is utilized to trigger the vehicles to store and share their data honestly; thus, they will obtain certain rewards from the system. Simulation results substantially display an efficient network performance along with forming an appropriate incentive model to reach a decentralized trusted data sharing management of IoVEC networks.
Yan Zhang, Lei Zhang, Burong Kang, Yue Ma · 5 authors
With the development of vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) technology, more and more smart parking systems in VANETs are presented. However, existing solutions suffer from the challenges of dishonest parking lots that may claim there are more empty spots than they actually have, malicious occupation of parking spots and multi-reservation attack, etc. To address these challenges, we propose a secure and reliable smart parking protocol based on blockchain and linkable group signatures. For the security of our scheme, it not only realizes traditional authentication, privacy preservation and message confidentiality requirements but also prevents multi-reservation attack and the dishonest parking lots that claim more empty spots than they actually have.
Danxin Wang, Lan Zhang, Chuanhe Huang, Xieyang Shen
Blockchain-based trust management has attracted great attention for vehicular networks due to its decentralized, transparent, and tamper-proof natures. However, the highly dynamic vehicular environment challenges the reliability of trust evaluation as well as the privacy preservation of vehicles against tracking attacks. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving trust management system to evaluate the trustworthiness of vehicles by exploiting the recent advanced blockchain techniques. Specifically, we build up a trust evaluation blockchain, where the trustworthiness of an involved vehicle is evaluated by distributed road-side units (RSUs) based on the rating feedback from neighboring vehicles. To enable efficient and privacy-preserving trust evaluation, we deploy the feedback messages aggregation and trust evaluation on two smart contracts, which are executed and verified by distributed RSUs automatically. In particular, identity authentication based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) cryptosystem is introduced to prevent privacy leakage of vehicles. Security analysis and performance evaluation reveal that our system is secure and efficient to manage the trust evaluation while guaranteeing privacy-preservation for vehicular networks.
The security and privacy of healthcare enterprises (HEs) are crucial because they maintain sensitive information. Because of the unique functional requirement of omni-inclusiveness, HEs are expected to monitor patients, allowing for connectivity with vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In the absence of literature on security provisioning frameworks that connect VANETs and HEs, this paper presents a smart zero-knowledge proof and statistical fingerprinting-based trusted secure communication framework for a fog computing environment. A zero-knowledge proof is used for vehicle authentication, and statistical fingerprinting is employed to secure communication between VANETs and HEs. Authenticity verification of the operations is performed at the on-board unit (OBU) fitted in the vehicle based on the service executions at the resident hardware platform. The processor clock cycles are acquired from the service executions in a complete sandboxed environment. The calculated cycles assist in developing the blueprint signature for the particular OBU of the vehicle. Hence, the fingerprint signature helps build trust and plays a key role in authenticating the vehicle's horizontal movement to everything or to different sections of the HEs. In an environment enabled for fog computing, our novel model can provide efficient remote monitoring.
With the development of autonomous driving and the Internet of Vehicles, vehicle data communication and data security become more and more important. Blockchain which has transparency, decentralization and immutability nature is treated as a promising approach to support intelligent vehicle systems. However, due to the high data update overhead, vulnerable raw data storage policy and inflexible consensus algorithm, traditional blockchain technologies are not suitable in modern vehicular systems. Hence, we propose, a blockchain data storage system that supports incremental data updating. Specifically, the system reduces the re-uploaded data size through smart contract and data partition to decrease the overhead. Besides, data replica and multi-data source addressing of index on the chain enhance the data reliability. In addition, an adaptive proof-of-work algorithm is developed, whose execution cost is dynamically adjusted based on nodes' behavior. It greatly improves the data record and updating efficiency. Comprehensive experimental results show that BUS can effectively improve the data updating efficiency with low overhead and fewer resources in intelligent vehicle scenarios.
Hailin Xiao, Wenqian Zhang, Wanying Li, Anthony T. Chronopoulos · 5 authors
The cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) networks support diverse kinds of services, such as traffic management, road safety, and sharing data. However, the safety issues cannot be ignored in the process of information transmission. In this article, a joint clustering and blockchain scheme is proposed for real-time information security transmission to prevent some vehicles from sending malicious messages to disrupt the traffic order at the crossroads in C-V2X networks. In this scheme, the dynamic stability of the cluster is maintained by updating the trust value of the vehicle nodes, which can improve the real time and accuracy of the information transmission. The modified Webster algorithm is presented to divert the traffic flow so as to reduce the traffic jams at the crossroads. Meanwhile, the blockchain technology is utilized to establish a vehicle trust management mechanism in C-V2X, which can avoid malicious tampering of vehicle information during information sharing and ensure the safety of vehicle information communication. The simulation results of the Veins simulation platform are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and verify that the proposed scheme can guarantee the security of real-time information transmission.
Security Credential Management System (SCMS) provides the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for vehicular networking. SCMS builds the state-of-the-art distributed PKI to protect the vehicular networking privacy against an honest-but-curious authority (by the use of multiple PKI authorities) and to decentralize the PKI root of trust (by the Elector-Based Root Management or EBRM, having the distributed electors manage the Root Certificate Authority or RCA). We build on the EBRM architecture and construct a Blockchain-Based Root Management (BBRM) to provide even greater decentralization and security. More specifically, BBRM uses blockchain to i) replace the existing RCA and have the electors directly involved in the root certificate generation, ii) control the elector network membership including elector addition and revocation, and iii) provide greater accountability and transparency on the aforementioned functionalities. We implement BBRM on Hyperledger Fabric using smart contract for system experimentation and analyses. Our experiments show that BBRM is lightweight in processing, efficient in ledger size, and supports a bandwidth of multiple transactions per second. Our results show that the BBRM blockchain is appropriate for the root certificate generation and the elector membership control for EBRM within SCMS, which are significantly smaller in number and occurrences than the SCMS outputs of vehicle certificates. We also experiment to analyze how the BBRM distributed consensus protocol parameters, such as the number of electors and the number of required votes, affect the overall scheme's performances.
Yilong Hui, Nan Cheng, Zhou Su, Yuanhao Huang · 7 authors
The customization of edge computing services is one of the key research fields in sixth-generation (6G) heterogeneous vehicular networks (HetVNETs). With various personalized requirements of vehicles on computation-intensive applications, how to explore the heterogeneous computing resources in the 6G HetVNETs to guarantee vehicles with the customized Quality of Experience (QoE), therefore, becomes a challenge. In this article, we develop a novel secure scheme to provide personalized edge computing services for moving vehicles (MVs) in 6G HetVNETs. In the scheme, a smart-contract-based secure edge computing architecture is designed by jointly considering the attack models and the characteristics of the 6G network infrastructures (e.g., satellites, drones, base stations, and roadside units), where each network infrastructure manages a number of parking vehicles to complete computing services collaboratively. With this architecture, based on the available computing resources owned by different network infrastructures, the collaborative computing resource allocation algorithm is designed to help each network infrastructure decide a customized service strategy (CSS) to satisfy the QoE of MVs. After deciding the CSSs, a model based on the second price-sealed auction is formulated to describe the competition among the network infrastructures, where the Nash equilibrium of the game is obtained to guide their optimal bidding strategies to obtain the chance for completing the services. The security analysis and the simulation results show that the proposed scheme can defend against the attacks and lead to a lower cost for completing the services than the conventional schemes.