Connected vehicles (CVs) are getting increasing attention in intelligent transportation systems (ITSs). In terms of the stringent security and anonymity issues, a novel anonymous and decentralized payment platform is demanded. Bitcoin is regarded as a potential solution. But the existing Bitcoin and its various improvements lack a beforehand anti-fraud Bitcoin deposit scheme, which is necessary to prevent potential fraud risks from Bitcoin to CVs. This paper aims to build a novel anti-fraud deposit scheme as a seamless bridge between CV networks and the Bitcoin payment platform. We propose a Bitcoin-to-Connected-Vehicle deposit scheme (Bit2CV) with an outsourcing endorsement in order to build an anti-fraud deposit transaction (dtr). Firstly, Bit2CV leverages a special Bitcoin-opcode-OP_RETURN based method to record the dtr, the CV's request, and the endorsement together on Blockchain ledger. This method can achieve security features, including non-repudiation, privacy-friendly endorsement, future audit, and anti-fraud. Meanwhile, Bit2CV is fully decentralized without any involvement of centralized authorities and fully compatible with the current Bitcoin network. We conduct the security analysis and also simulations for performance evaluation. In a typical scenario of our simulation, Bit2CV total time cost is less than 477.03 ms, and the size of the endorsement is 1,732 bytes, which is much less and smaller than transaction confirmation time and the average block size, respectively. These designs and results demonstrate that Bit2CV is feasible and practical.
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) greatly improves the traffic environment and life efficiency using messages shared between vehicles. However, due to its complex network structure and high mobility, the messages shared between vehicles are not always reliable. To this, we propose a trust management system of IoV based on blockchain, which formalizes a complete vehicle reputation value calculation scheme to deal with the problem of calculating the credibility of messages. The proposed scheme can detect vehicles that send malicious messages and reduce their reputation values for punishing according to the rating mechanism. In addition, we design a blockchain-based data storage system that can prevent attackers from tampering with the reputation values stored in roadside units (RSUs). In view of the lack of calculation basis when roadside units verify the block, we also store the rating list it. Finally, we use the consensus mechanism that combines PoW and PoS to ensure that vehicles with a large change in reputation can be updated to the blockchain first. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme has an obvious limitation on malicious vehicles, and improves the accuracy of the vehicles’ judgment of events based on the received messages.
Yujian Zhang, Fei Tong, Yuwei Xu, Jun Tao · 5 authors
The authentication protocol is commonly served as the first defense line against various attacks in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Conventional schemes usually employ public key infrastructure or cryptography-based algorithms, which suffer from high computational and storage cost. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving authentication scheme for VANETs based on consortium blockchain. The authenticity of a vehicle or a road-side unit is represented by its transaction capability on blockchain instead of a certificate or a cryptographic key. In support of that, we design a novel data structure based on the unspent transaction output (UTXO) combined with a set of online operations, including issue, transfer, query and revocation. Thus, the authentication between two entities is accomplished by on-chain verification and corresponding communications. We conduct a set of security and privacy analysis as well as implementing a prototype on the Hyperledger Fabric platform, to evaluate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed scheme.
The wide expansion of the Internet of Things is pushing the growth of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) into the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Secure data communication is vital to the success and stability of the IoV and should be integrated into its various operations and aspects. In this paper, we present a framework for secure IoV communications by utilizing the High Performance Blockchain Consensus (HPBC) algorithm. Based on a previously published communication model for VANETs that uses an efficient routing protocol for transmitting packets between vehicles, we describe in this paper how to integrate a blockchain model on top of the IoV communications system. We illustrate the method that we used to implement HPBC within the IoV nodes. In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed model, we carry out extensive simulations that test the proposed model and study its overhead on the IoV network. The simulation results demonstrated the good performance of the HPBC algorithm when implemented within the IoV environment.
Modern Internet of Things (IoT) networks including vehicle networks face an increased demand for security and access control with respect to privacy for sensitive data. Data manipulation and tampering of emissions values due to the economic incentives and environmental and health issues require a tamper-proof solution with the use of blockchain (BC) where the integrity of data is ensured. In this paper, we propose the integration of a public permissioned Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI) framework with a permissioned consortium BC based architecture. This innovatively supports the decentralization of the authentication and authorization processes to overcome the single point of failure problems and the use of SSI to assign identities to IoT devices. Additionally, it gives full control to the holders for their identities, whether they are humans, organizations or smart vehicles. With the practice of advanced zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) cryptographic techniques, the exposure of sensitive and private information is minimized to the absolute necessary and gains in performance and scalability are achieved. Furthermore, the way this ecosystem of technologies is combined guarantees a trusted environment for enabling and automating vehicles' emissions certification according to emissions standards and regulations. Detailed descriptions of the processes required to integrate Hyperledger Indy (HLI) SSIs to authenticate and authorize entities on a Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) network are being quoted.
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are projected to be an integral component in intelligent transportation systems, poised to support road safety services via the Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Roadside (V2R) units communication. With the evolution of technology and the growth in the number of smart vehicles, traditional VANETs face technical challenges in deployment and management due to less scalability and poor connectivity. Current smart vehicles are identified, authenticated, and connected through central cloud servers. This model will have limited scalability as the technology becomes pervasive, and the cloud servers will remain a single point of failure that can disrupt the entire network. Therefore, we need a secure distributed system to reduce the network traffic rate. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based distributed message exchange system that will handle the exchange of safety and periodic beacon messages among vehicles. Since blockchain is characterized as being a decentralized and non-tampering system. We considered saving the safety messages only in the blockchain as they occur less than the periodic messages and they are more important. We propose to implement the blockchain per country to reduce the number of nodes/vehicles joining the network. We also reduce the block body size by using the Kademlia Distributed Hash Table (DHT) to broadcast the beacon messages. Experimental evaluation shows that the system can protect a V2V network against different attack types, such as sybil attack and alteration attack with TPR more than 95%. The experiments also show that the block body size is reduced by a factor of 1:5, which helps in broadcasting the data faster.
Andrea Tesei, Domenico Lattuca, Marco Luise, Paolo Pagano · 6 authors
The widespread adoption of Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Mobility (CCAM) applications requires the implementation of stringent security mechanisms to minimize the surface of cyber attacks. Authentication is an effective process for validating user identity in vehicular networks. However, authentication alone is not enough to prevent dangerous attack situations. Existing security mechanisms are not able to promptly revoke the credentials of misbehaving vehicles, thus tolerate malicious actors to remain trusted in the system for a long time. The resulting vulnerability window allows the implementation of complex attacks, thus posing a substantial impairment to the security of the vehicular ecosystem. In this paper we propose a Distributed Ledger-based Vehicular Revocation Scheme that improves the state of the art by providing a \textit{vulnerability window} lower than 1 second, reducing well-behaved vehicles exposure to sophisticated and potentially dangerous attacks. The proposed scheme harnesses the advantages of the underlying Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to implement a privacy-aware revocation process while being fully transparent to all participating entities. Furthermore, it meets the critical message processing times defined by EU and US standards, thus closing a critical gap in the current international standards. Theoretical analysis and experimental validation demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme, where DLT streamlines the revocation operation overhead and delivers an economically viable yet scalable solution against cyber attacks on vehicular systems.
Vehicular ad-hoc networks are networks formed by fast moving vehicles which come in contact momentarily and exchange information. Since it's an ad-hoc network, it becomes difficult to maintain trust, security and authenticity of information being exchanged in the network. In this paper, we leverage the concepts of blockchain to maintain trust in the network. Since blockchain provides a tamperproof, decentralized mechanism to store data, we use it to store information related to events such as collision, accident, SOS etc. The information stored on blockchain can be used to validate it at later points of time so as to minimize the false benefit cases by use of Proof of Location certificates. The proposed system has the potential to increase the trust of end users in VANETs. It can also be integrated into the design of future vehicles because of its ease of implementation. The paper also discusses the benefits and constraints of the proposed model along with the related future work.
Based on the characteristics of blockchain technology, an aviation data exchange platform is designed to realize the rapid exchange of aviation data between business departments. The platform design adopts alliance chain and private chain. Each data production unit, such as relevant departments of air traffic control, airlines, airports, etc., has its own private chain. Multiple private chains form an alliance chain. In each private chain, there are servers, which store encrypted aviation data. The alliance chain builds alliance block based on the hash value of private chain block, and uses re-encryption to exchange data by changing encryption, the platform achieves data integrity, access control, exchange security and other security goals.
Currently, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has caused catastrophic effect on every aspect of our lives, globally. The entire human race of all countries and regions has suffered devastating losses. With its high infectiousness and mortality rate, it is of great significance to carry out effective precautions and prevention of COVID-19. Specifically, the transportation system has been confirmed as one of the crucial spreading routes. Hence, enhancing healthcare monitoring and infection tracking for high-mobility transportation system is infeasible for pandemic control. Meanwhile, due to the promising advantages in the emerging intelligent transportation system (ITS), vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is able to collect and process relevant vehicular data for improving the driving experience and road safety, which provide a way for non-contact automatic healthcare monitoring. Furthermore, the proliferating cloud computing and blockchain techniques enable sufficient processing and storing capabilities, along with decentralized remote auditing towards heterogenous vehicular data. In this case, the automated infection tracking for pandemic control could be achieved accordingly. For the above consideration, in this paper we develop a practical homomorphic authentication scheme for cloud-assisted VANETs, where the healthcare monitoring for all involving passengers is provided. Notably, the integrated cloud-assisted VANET infrastructure is utilized, where the hybrid medical data acquisition module is attached. In this way, timely, non-contact measurement on all passengers’ physical status can be remotely done by vehicular cloud (VC), which could also drastically improve the efficiency and guarantee safety. Vulnerabilities of the employed dedicated-short-range-communication (DSRC) technique could be properly addressed with the applied homomorphic encryption design. Additionally, the decentralized blockchain-based vehicle recording mechanism is cooperatively performed by VC and edge units. Infection tracking on specific vehicle and individual can be offered in this way. Each signature sequence is collaboratively maintained and verified by the current roadside unit (RSU) and its neighbor RSUs. The security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is secure against major attacks, while the performance comparison with the state-of-the-arts relevant methods are presented for efficiency discussion.
Blockchain is an emerging technology that has shaken the financial sector, and which is already perceived as having an impact. A blockchain is a network of many interconnected nodes, both trustworthy and malicious, which can reach a consensus and generate valid data. The resulting information is packed into a block and permanently saved on the network in a tamper-proof way. In this paper, we propose an adaptation of blockchain for securely storing data in a vehicular-based network. Our approach can work for storing data such as traffic events and user reputation. The proposed solution has two interconnected components: the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) blockchain and the reputation system. The paper presents synthetic tests which validate the use cases of the solution: users reporting speeds and alerts behind which we see a fair reputation system penalising the (wrong/false) users.
Abhilash Kancharla, Zuqiang Ke, Nohpill Park, Hye-Young Kim
The hybrid chain is proposed in this paper to investigate on a new blockchain network that is to be built across private and main nets, namely, a hybrid chain. Note that the hybrid chain is distinguished from the on/off-balanced chain such that the hybrid chain is across two different (e.g., Hypercubes private net vs. Ethereum main net) while the on/off-balanced chain across on-chain and off-chain (e.g., Ethereum main net vs. cloud). It is essential to build a dependable interface in between private and main nets if business to consumer (or vice versa) transactions are demanded for instance. In the course of interfacing across private and main nets, dependability is to be considered as one of the most critical design factors in order to ensure private transactions stay within the private territory and publicized transactions stay public in the main net, and further in order to facilitate a seamless yet dependable execution of transactions across the border. In this context, the efficacy of the privacy of the private net side and the publicity of the main net side will be addressed and modeled by tracing a transaction's stochastic process at a steady state. A protype for an isolated testing across the Ethereum and Hypercubes open source for validation purpose is proposed along with extensive parametric simulations.
Compared with traditional insurance schemes, usage-based insurance (UBI) for vehicles is more economic and accurate for drivers since its insurance premium calculation depends on how vehicles are driven. However, UBI requires sensitive driving data to determine insurance premiums, and this could result in serious privacy breach for drivers. Meanwhile, existing UBI solutions rely on a centralized entity (i.e., the insurance company) to manage insurances. In this article, we design a decentralized and privacy-preserving UBI scheme, called DUBI, based on the blockchain technology and zero-knowledge proof. In our scheme, a smart contract running over the blockchain serves as a “decentralized” insurance company, while drivers continuously upload their committed driving data to the blockchain. Periodically, the driver submits accumulated driving statistics with a zero-knowledge proof to the smart contract, which verifies the proof and calculates the insurance premium from the submitted statistics. We formulate an ideal functionality for DUBI under the universal composability framework, and then provide a formal security proof for DUBI. Furthermore, we give in-depth analysis and performance evaluation for DUBI with an implementation based on Ethereum. It shows that DUBI is highly efficient in processing UBI insurances in both storage and computation: DUBI is about seven times more efficient than existing schemes in storage, and proof generation and verification take only 7 and 30 ms, respectively.
Autonomous vehicles (AV) utilize various machine learning (ML) models for performing tasks such as pedestrian detection, charging station prediction, routing path prediction, intrusion detection, to name a few. To improve the robustness of such applications, decentralized collaboration is imperative in a vehicular network. Moreover, decentralized collaboration poses threats, such as forged message injection, forged identity, and repudiatory activities, as most vehicles are stranger to each other. In recent years, blockchain technology has been widely used in the vehicular network to enhance trust, provenance, and eliminate unauthorized access to the vehicular services. However, most of the existing vehicular blockchain suffers from issues related to scalability, efficiency, and transaction verification. In this paper, we propose a lightweight vehicular blockchain architecture for distributed model sharing to enhance trust, verifiability, and non-repudiation in distributed vehicular collaboration. We propose a novel PoVS-BFT protocol and an effective two-step transaction verification mechanism for model sharing applications. Finally, simulation results are presented to conform to the efficacy of our proposed architecture. Simulation results show that the proposed PoVS-BFT protocol can minimize the size of consensus committee up to 62.5% which in turn reduces communication complexity during the consensus process.
Blockchain applications in vehicular networks can offer many advantages, including decentralization and improved security. However, most of the consensus algorithms in blockchain are difficult to be implemented in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) without the help of edge computing services. For example, the connectivity in VANET only remains for a short period of time, which is not sufficient for highly time-consuming consensus algorithms, e.g., Proof of Work, running on mobile-edge nodes (vehicles). Other consensus algorithms also have some drawbacks, e.g., Proof of Stake (PoS) is biased toward nodes with a higher amount of stakes and Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) is not highly secure against malicious nodes. For these reasons, we propose a voting blockchain based on the Proof-of-Quality-Factor (PoQF) consensus algorithm, where the threshold number of votes is controlled by edge computing servers. Specifically, PoQF includes voting for message validation and a competitive relay selection process based on the probabilistic prediction of channel quality between the transmitter and receiver. The performance bounds of failure and latency in message validation are obtained. This article also analyzes the throughput of block generation, as well as the asymptotic latency, security, and communication complexity of PoQF. An incentive distribution mechanism to reward honest nodes and punish malicious nodes is further presented and its effectiveness against the collusion of nodes is proved using the game theory. Simulation results show that PoQF reduces failure in validation by 11% and 15% as compared to PoS and PoET, respectively, and is 68 ms faster than PoET.
Autonomous vehicle platoon is a promising paradigm towards traffic congestion problems in the intelligent transportation system. However, under certain circumstances, the advantage of the platoon cannot be fully developed. In this paper, we focus on the highway Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) charging problem. We try to let the opportunistic platoon pass the ETC as a whole. There are three main issues in this scenario. Firstly, the opportunistic platoon is temporarily composed; vehicles do not trust each other. Secondly, single vehicle may try to escape from the ETC charging by following the platoon. Finally, platoon members may collude with each other and try to underreport the number of vehicles in the platoon so as to evade payment. To solve these challenges, we propose a blockchain-based efficient highway toll paradigm for the opportunistic platoon. The driving history, credential information of every registered vehicle, is recorded and verified from the blockchain. A roadside unit (RSU) is adopted to distinguish the single vehicle from the platoon and in charge of lane allocation. Additionally, an aggregate signature is introduced to accelerate the authentication procedure in the RSU. We analyse the potential security threats in this scenario. The experimental result indicates that our scheme is efficient and practical.
Ahmed Didouh, Anthony Bahadir Lopez, Yassin El Hillali, Atika Rivenq · 5 authors
Cooperative intelligent transportation system (C-ITS) applications are generally susceptible to position spoofing-dependent attacks such as Sybil and DDoS attacks due to a lack of established solutions. This paper presents a novel cyber-physical blockchain cryptographic architecture to help prevent position spoofing attackers from becoming validated nodes in C-ITS applications. The solution also guarantees security requirements including the non-trivial non-repudiation in light of these and other attacks. With a use case of electronic toll collection (ETC), our architecture implements techniques based on Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) measurements in conjunction with blockchain authentication methods such as Proof-of-Location and smart contracts to determine the legitimacy of a node. We demonstrate our solution in experiments using ITS-G5 Cohda Wireless technology (a Road Side Unit and two On-Board Units programmed with the ITS Vanetza stack) with functionalities specified by the European Telecommunications Standardization Institute (ETSI). From our experimental results from several driving-based data gathering tests, we discovered that our solution is able to cope with noise and relative velocity challenges because it incorporates both OBUs and RSUs in the Proof of Location computation steps. In light of this, the proposed architecture may also be applicable to govern V2X in general.
Amira Kchaou, Samiha Ayed, Ryma Abassi, Sihem Guemara El Fatmi
In Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), vehicles exchange safety and road information in order to reduce the number of accidents on the road and get the best updated information to optimize their road path. However, the secure communications face big challenges in the VANETs. In a previous work, we have proposed a distributed trust management scheme based on the blockchain technology in order to provide a secure vehicle communication by checking the correctness of the message. For this purpose, the Blockchain facilitates the sharing of secure in-formation or messages among vehicles. However, vehicles cannot share the resources with other entities using only the blockchain and cannot manage to access control their resources. In order to provide an access control policies of the resources requested by the vehicle, we propose a distributed access control model for vehicles based on smart contracts and ABAC model to share the resources through miners. Then, we evaluate the execution time and the storage of the proposal.
Gianmarco Baldini, José L. Hernández-Ramos, Gary Steri, Ricardo Neisse · 5 authors
In recent years, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) and blockchain have become disruptive technologies to support distributed and trusted sharing ecosystems in various domains. Among the potential scenarios that can leverage their benefits, cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) and autonomous vehicles (AV) represent a key trend of the next digital era to build a safer society. However, different aspects such as performance and practical issues, as well as conformance with current standards and legislation, may hinder the adoption of DLT in such scenarios. This article analyses the potential applications that could leverage DLTs features and the challenges to be overcome in the coming years to foster the adoption of DLTs in C-ITS and AV. Through this analysis, we additionally provide a set of potential research directions and ways forward to exploit the advantages of DLTs in C-ITS and AV in terms of decentralized trust and transparency.
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) has become an important part of modern intelligent transportation systems (ITS). However, under the influence of malicious mobile vehicles, offloading vehicle tasks to the cloud server is threatened by security attacks. Edge cloud offloading (ECCO) has considered a promising approach to enable latency-sensitive VANET. How to solve the complex computation offloading of vehicles while ensuring the high security of the cloud server is an issue that needs urgent research. In this paper, we studied the safety and offloading of multi-vehicle ECCO system based on cloud blockchain. First, to achieve consensus in the vehicular environment, we propose a distributed hierarchical software-defined VANET (SDVs) framework to establish a security architecture. Secondly, to improve the security of offloading, we propose to use blockchain-based access control, which protects the cloud from illegal offloading actions. Finally, to solve the intensive computing problem of authorized vehicles, we determine task offloading via jointly optimizing offloading decisions, consensus mechanism decisions, allocation of computation resources and channel bandwidth. The optimization method is designed to minimize long-term system of delays, energy consumption, and flow costs for all vehicles. To better resolve the proposed offloading method, we develop a new deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm via utilizing extended deep Q-networks. We evaluate the performance of our framework on access control and offloading through numerical simulations, which have significant advantages over existing solutions.