Vehicular Ad Hoc networks (VANETs) is a new emerging technology that aims at connecting vehicles using wireless communication technologies. With the emergence of VANETs, new advanced applications have emerged away which aim at enhancing driving safety and traffic management. These applications exploit the huge amount of data, shared between vehicles and infrastructure, through advanced data analysis. Due to resources limitation of vehicles, this increasing volume of data is stored on powerful edge computing servers spread over the VANETs infrastructure. However, these edge servers are not fully trusted, which rise new serious security and privacy challenges regarding the shared data between vehicles. In this work, we propose a new data-sharing scheme that protects the privacy of vehicles and drivers. We base our construction on consortium blockchain, smart contracts and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to propose a decentralized and anonymous data-sharing scheme. In addition, we propose a fine-grained data storage scheme on the top of blockchain, based on publish-subscribe model to enhance the data management. We confirm the efficiency of our scheme through extensive simulations and experiments. The numerical results showed that our protocol achieves a reasonable efficiency while guaranteeing a high level of security.
The rapid advancements in autonomous technologies have paved way for vehicular networks. In particular, Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) forms the basis of the future of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). ITS represents the communication among vehicles by acquiring and sharing the data. Though congestion control is enhanced by Internet of Vehicles (IoV), there are various security criteria where entire communication can lead to many security and privacy challenges. A blockchain can be deployed to provide the IoV devices with the necessary authentication and security feature for the transfer of data. Blockchain based IoV mechanism eliminates the single source of failure and remains secure at base despite having strong security, the higher level layers and applications are susceptible to attacks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to overcome several vulnerabilities of current blockchain technology. In this paper, we propose an AI-Powered Blockchain which provides auto coding feature for the smart contracts making it an intelligent contract. Moreover, it speeds up the transaction verification and optimises energy consumption. The results show that intelligent contracts provide higher security compared to smart contracts considering range of different scenarios.
While Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) can potentially improve driver safety and traffic mangement efficiency (e.g. through timely sharing of traffic status among vehicles), security and privacy are two ongoing issues that need to be addressed. Hence, security solutions such as conditional privacy-preserving authentication (CPPA) protocols have been proposed. However, CPPA protocols are generally far from being ready for deployment in VANETs, for example due key/certificate management limitations in PKI-based protocols or intractable private key updating in ID-based protocols. Although serveral blockchain-based CPPA (BCPPA) protocols have been proposed to mitigiate these challenges, there still exist some intractabilities such as revoking private key, or frequent interactions, or requiring an idea hardware. Thus, in this paper, we are motivated to propose a novel BCPPA protocol without these existing issues. Specifically, we present a PKI-based solution (using a typical digital signature protocol, such as ECDSA) based on Ethereum (a public blockchain), which is designed to facilitate secure communication in VANETs. In other words, we combine the blockchain technology and a key derivation algorithm to realize an effective certificate management. This reduces the need for participating vehicles to store a large number of private keys. To reduce the verification time cost, our BCPPA suppotrs replacing ECDSA with modified ECDSA for batch verification or directly adopting other PKI-based signatures with batch verification. In addition to introducing the concrete design, we also present the security requirements that our BCPPA protocol can satisfy. We then implement BCPPA in the Ethereum test network (i.e.Rinkeby) and provide simulations using VanetMobiSim and NS-2 to show its feasibility (i.e. milliseconds).
Furqan Jameel, Muhammad Awais Javed, Sherali Zeadally, Riku Jäntti
Cellular vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is expected to herald the age of autonomous vehicles in the coming years. With the integration of blockchain in such networks, information of all granularity levels, from complete blocks to individual transactions, would be accessible to vehicles at any time. Specifically, the blockchain technology is expected to improve the security, immutability, and decentralization of cellular V2X communication through smart contract and distributed ledgers. Although blockchain-based cellular V2X networks hold promise, many challenges need to be addressed to enable the future interoperability and accessibility of such large-scale platforms. One such challenge is the offloading of mining tasks in cellular V2X networks. While transportation authorities may try to balance the network mining load, the vehicles may select the nearest mining clusters to offload a task. This may cause congestion and disproportionate use of vehicular network resources. To address this issue, we propose a game-theoretic approach for balancing the load at mining clusters while maintaining fairness among offloading vehicles. Keeping in mind the low-latency requirements of vehicles, we consider a finite channel blocklength transmission which is more practical compared to the use of infinite blocklength codes. The simulation results obtained with our proposed offloading framework show improved performance over the conventional nearest mining cluster selection technique.
Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) is highly characterized by collaborative environment data sensing, computing and processing. Emerging Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies show significant advantages and efficiency for knowledge sharing among intelligent vehicles. However, it is challenging to guarantee the security and privacy of knowledge during the sharing process. Moreover, conventional AI-based algorithms cannot work properly in distributed vehicular networks. In this paper, a hierarchical blockchain framework and a hierarchical federated learning algorithm are proposed for knowledge sharing, by which vehicles learn environmental data through machine learning methods and share the learning knowledge with each others. The proposed hierarchical blockchain framework is feasible for the large scale vehicular networks. The hierarchical federated learning algorithm is designed to meet the distributed pattern and privacy requirement of IoVs. Knowledge sharing is then modeled as a trading market process to stimulate sharing behaviours, and the trading process is formulated as a multi-leader and multi-player game. Simulation results show that the proposed hierarchical algorithm can improve the sharing efficiency and learning quality. Furthermore, the blockchain-enabled framework is able to deal with certain malicious attacks effectively.
Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication has gained importance in recent times because of the increasing number of traffic accidents and advancements in information sharing. A secure and reliable data transfer has become important to ensure the safety and trust of vehicular network users. Because of scalability of V2V communication, proposed solutions must have low computational complexities and free from latency issues. In this paper, we utilize the channel characteristics of wireless networks in V2V communication, which are used to generate link fingerprints. By using blockchain technology, data authentication among vehicles can be achieved in real time. The proposed algorithms are used to address the time complexity and delay issues in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), which are lightweight and provide real time adversary detection within the network. Blockchain technology is used to generate blocks in which each hash is generated and shared with corresponding vehicles. The hash itself is not generated if an adversary affects the communication among vehicles. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient is calculated for each link and it is calculated as 0.9749 when there is no adversary and 0.1282 when an adversary is introduced into the network. The time complexity is computed as low asO(1) for the network.
In the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs), vehicles generate and disseminate information, which makes the related vehicular services realized. However, the IoVs is an untrusted environment. Vehicles cannot evaluate the credibility of the received information, which makes it a challenge to implement data sharing in IoVs. Blockchain, constantly directed main attention, are considered as a feasible solution to address the challenge, due to its advantages of decentralization, unforgeability, and collective maintenance. The consensus mechanism of blockchain requires the miners in the system with strong computing power for mining, while the computing power of nodes in IoVs is limited, which restricts the application of blockchain in IoVs. In fact, the application of blockchain in IoVs can be implemented by employing edge computing. The key entity of edge computing is the edge servers(ESs). Roadside nodes (RSUs) can be deployed as ESs of edge computing in IoVs. In this article, we study the ESs deployment scheme for covering more vehicle nodes in IoVs, and propose a randomized algorithm to calculate approximation solutions. Finally, we simulated the performance of the proposed scheme and compared it with other deployment schemes.
Recent developments in IoT have facilitated advancements in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with autonomous vehicles and roadside infrastructure as its key components. IoV aims to provide new innovative services for different modes of transport with adaptive traffic management and enables vehicles to broadcast messages to improve traffic safety and efficiency. However, due to nontrusted environments, it is difficult for vehicles to evaluate the credibility of the messages that they receive. Therefore, trust establishment in IoV is a key security concern that is constantly limited by scalability challenges. This article proposes a blockchain-based protocol for IoV using smart contracts, physical unclonable functions (PUFs), certificates, and a dynamic Proof-of-Work (dPoW) consensus algorithm. The blockchain, in conjunction with contracts, provides a secure framework for registering trusted vehicles and blocking malicious ones. PUFs are used to assign a unique identity to each vehicle via which trust is established. Certificates are issued by roadside units that preserve the privacy of vehicles, whereas the dPoW consensus allows the protocol to scale according to the incoming traffic generated by the vehicles. To demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of the proposed protocol, security and performance analyses are presented. A case study is also discussed along with a comparative analysis, which confirms that our protocol can provide superior decentralized trust management for IoV.
The Internet of things (IoT), the Internet of vehicles, and blockchain technology have become very popular these days because of their versatility. Road traffic, which is increasing day by day, is causing more and more deaths worldwide. The world needs a product that would reduce the number of road accidents. This paper suggests combining IoT and blockchain technology to mitigate road hazards. The new intelligent transportation system technologies and the subsequent emergence of 5G technologies will be a blessing, delivering the necessary speed to ensure both safety and quality of service (QoS). Hashgraph technology, a distributed ledger technology is used to create communication networks between the different vehicles and other relevant parameters. Scheduling the requests according to the priorities for ensuring better QoS quotient can be effectively done using hashgraph. We demonstrated how the hashgraph outstrips other equivalents platforms. The proposed model was simulated using OMNeT++ with proper design and network description files. A hardware implementation of the proposed model was also done. Messages were transferred between the vehicles and prioritized using a hashgraph. This paper proposes an effective model in reducing the accidents in terms of parameters like speed, security, stability, and fairness.
Abstract In the past few decades, Intelligent Transport System (ITS) has gained the popularity in smart society. Global automotive stakeholders such as Google, Uber, and Toshiba are the driving force in that and also looking for the interconnection of autonomous vehicles (AVs) for road traffic management, that is, connected AVs (CAV). CAVs are vulnerable to various safety and security issues, for instance, denial‐of‐service, global positioning system (GPS) spoofing, man‐in‐the‐middle, and timing attacks, which raise serious concerns for their development in application specific areas. Although many solutions exist in the literature, most of them are focused on centralized systems, which is having a single‐point‐failure. In light of the above facts, we analyze and classify the security and privacy issues in CAV and proposed a solution taxonomy in this article. We emphasized the defense mechanism for these attacks on the CAV system along with their enactment on issues and discovered how emergent blockchain technology could handle it. Furthermore, we proposed a blockchain‐based secure and decentralized CAV architecture to mitigate security and privacy issues such as denial of service, man‐in‐the‐middle, hijacking, GPS spoofing, and replay attacks. Finally, we reconnoiter the open research challenges associated with the blockchain‐based CAV system. To validate the efficacy of the proposed system, a real‐time case study on smart city integration over edge computing using computation and communication costs is proposed in this article.
Byeong-Gyu Jeong, Taek-Young Youn, Nam-Su Jho, Sang Uk Shin
Currently, "connected cars" are being actively designed over smart cars and autonomous cars, to establish a two-way communication network between the vehicle and all infrastructure. Additionally, because vehicle black boxes are becoming more common, specific processes for secure and efficient data sharing and transaction via vehicle networks must be developed. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain-based vehicle data marketplace platform model, along with a data sharing scheme, using Blockchain-based data-owner-based attribute-based encryption (DO-ABE). The proposed model achieves the basic requirements such as data confidentiality, integrity, and privacy. The proposed system securely and effectively handles large-capacity and privacy-sensitive black box video data by storing the metadata on Blockchain (on-chain) and encrypted raw data on off-chain (external) storage, and adopting consortium Blockchain. Furthermore, the data owners of the proposed model can control their own data by applying the Blockchain-based DO-ABE and owner-defined access control lists.
Muhammad Sohaib Iftikhar, Nadeem Javaid, Omaji Samuel, Muhammad Shoaib · 5 authors
A large amount of data is involved in an effective and timely exchange of traffic information between vehicles in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), which ensures efficiency and reliability. VANETs assist in sharing traffic information effectively and timely to improve traffic efficiency and reliability. However, less storage capability and selfish behavior of the vehicles are important issues that need to be tackled. Moreover, traditional storage mechanisms require the involvement of third parties, which are insecure, untrustworthy, non-transparent, and unreliable. To overcome these issues, we proposed a blockchain-based data storage scheme for VANETs by exploiting the benefits of the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), which is deployed on Road Side Units (RSUs). Furthermore, RSUs are able to receive the aggregation packet comprising of the event information acquired from the vehicles. After receiving and verifying the aggregation packet, the RSU stores the event's information in IPFS and the reputation values of vehicles in blockchain. Moreover, we proposed an incentive mechanism in this work, in which monetary incentives are given to the repliers who agree with the vehicle regarding the event information. The incentives are given by the initiator after verifying the signatures of the repliers. All the transactions involved in the incentive process are stored in blockchain. The simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme in terms of transaction cost and storage savings in VANETs.
Jingxin Zhu, Yao Sun, Lei Zhang, Bin Cao · 6 authors
Blockchain-enabled wireless network has been recognized as an emerging network architecture to be widely employed into the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems for establishing trust and consensus mechanisms without the involvement of a third party. However, the uncertainty and vulnerability of wireless channels among the IoT nodes may pose a serious challenge to facilitate the deployment of blockchain in wireless networks. In this paper, we first present a generic system model for blockchain enabled wireless networks with multiple communication connections, where the number of communication connections between a client IoT node and the blockchain full nodes can be any arbitrary positive integer to satisfy different security requirements. Based on the proposed spatial-temporal network model, we theoretically calculate the transmission successful probability and the required communication throughput to support a wireless blockchain network. Finally, simulation results validate the accuracy of our theoretical analysis.
Secure message dissemination is an important requirement of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Existing solutions, such as broadcasting, are effective in flooding a message to a wider area, however, they are inherently unreliable and bandwidth inefficient. Furthermore, it is difficult to both assess the authenticity of a message and maintain the privacy of sender in a single solution. Moreover, as a practical solution, there is a need of economic modeling to incentivise vehicles for safe driving and cooperation. This paper proposes a blockchain based message dissemination approach which utilises incentive distribution and reputation management to overcome these challenges. Specifically, with the proposed voting based consensus algorithm, it can assess the authenticity of a message and select the most suitable relay node for its dissemination in a completely decentralised fashion. Meanwhile, the blockchain based integrated incentive and reputation scheme encourages the cooperation among vehicles and strengthens its ability to deliver authentic messages. The security capacity of the proposed solution is demonstrated by a game theoretic analysis. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can save average consensus time by 11% and improve success rate of authentic message dissemination by 17% with less number of hops as compared to the existing solutions.
In most cities, the availability of parking is a major concern. The misuse of parking spots as drivers park for longer than permitted periods cause more delays, inconvenience to others, and even parking tickets. Moreover, the payment systems at many locations are still not electronic and rely on hard currency. The search for a parking space also contributes to congestion, pollution, and other safety issues. This paper introduces an end-to-end system that enables automatic car payments in a safe, private, secure, and efficient manner using Blockchain technology. The proposed solution utilizes Ethereum to prototype a solution which can facilitate the parking payments. In addition, Android auto and application modules that automate the payment process have also been developed. Moreover, a validation technique for enhancing the quality and correctness of the proposed solution, namely Model-Based Testing Techniques, has been discussed. The latter consists of deriving test suites from an adopted formal model, performing them, and assessing the correctness. The used formal model may combine both functional and load aspects. A list of techniques for improving the formal testing approach was identified. Besides, the authors explained how to manage dynamic adaptations of the system under test and how to use isolation strategies for avoiding interference between testing and business behaviors. Finally, an optimization phase for testers placement inspired by fog computing is proposed as well.
The development of vehicular networks has greatly improved the efficiency and safety of intelligent traffic systems. However, it also introduces additional security threats into the system. The special characteristics of vehicular networks, such as dynamic topology, huge network scale and so on, make it difficult to adopt the traditional security solutions directly into this scenario. In addition, the single point failure problem of the centralized security mechanisms is also a big challenge. Recently, blockchain technology, which is a distributed database, is a potential approach to address these security issues. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the existing blockchain-based cybersecurity mechanisms is presented with the corresponding performance analysis. The purpose of this work is to provide a guideline for the further study in the application of blockchain in the vehicular network security area.
Muhammad Umar Javed, Abid Jamal, Nadeem Javaid, Noman Haider · 5 authors
Advertisement sharing in vehicular network through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is a fascinating in-vehicle service for advertisers and the users due to multiple reasons. It enable advertisers to promote their product or services in the region of their interest. Also the users get to receive more relevant ads. Usually, users tend to contribute in dissemination of ads if their privacy is preserved and if some incentive is provided. Recent researches have focused on enabling both of the parameters for the users by developing fair incentive mechanism which preserves privacy by using Zero-Knowledge Proof of Knowledge (ZKPoK) (Ming et al., 2019). However, the anonymity provided by ZKPoK can introduce internal attacker scenarios in the network due to which authenticated users can disseminate fake ads in the network without payment. As the existing scheme uses certificate-less cryptography, due to which malicious users cannot be removed from the network. In order to resolve these challenges, we employed conditional anonymity and introduced Monitoring Authority (MA) in the system. In our proposed scheme, the pseudonyms are assigned to the vehicles while their real identities are stored in Certification Authority (CA) in encrypted form. The pseudonyms are updated after a pre-defined time threshold to prevent behavioural privacy leakage. We performed security and performance analysis to show the efficiency of our proposed system.