Francesco Morano, Claudio Ferretti, Alberto Leporati, Paolo Napoletano · 5 authors
The number of sensors in cars and other vehicles has significantly increased in the last few years. Such sensors are used to monitor vehicle telemetry as well as driver's biometric and physiological data, with the aim of increasing the safety of people and decreasing the number of accidents. Data monitored by these sensors may also be used by insurance companies or police for accident, or more in general, event reconstruction. Whatever is the use, this data should be protected against cybersecurity attacks in order to guarantee the privacy of the drivers, and to prevent malicious modifications performed with the aim of cheating the insurance companies or police. The goal of this paper is to propose a framework, based on a permissioned blockchain, that allows to both guarantee driver data protection and evidential property of data. The scenario explored considers data recorded inside the car, encrypted and transferred to a cloud storage service. The encrypted version of the data is also hashed and hash is stored in the blockchain, to guarantee data integrity and inalterability. At the same time, the blockchain can be used as an official ledger for preserving the probative value of data.
With the rapid growth of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), there is now an increasing interest in the security of UAV systems. There exist various attacks which have threatened the security of UAV systems, in terms of the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) spoofing. Consisted of multiple UAVs, the flying ad hoc networks (FANET) have been studied to extend the employment and coverage of UAV systems. Based on the connectivity and information interaction of FANET, in this article, the blockchain technology is applied to detect GNSS signal attacks for UAV systems. In particular, we first introduce an overview of the GNSS security of UAV systems and the principles for blockchain technology. Based on the principles, a logical architecture is proposed, where blockchain is taken into consideration for GNSS spoofing detection. Performance analysis verifies that the proposed GNSS spoofing detection system can be used effectively. Finally, several challenges in blockchain are discussed, including security, cost, and regulation.
Data sharing and privacy securing present extensive opportunities and challenges in vehicular network. This paper introduces `trust access authentication scheme' as a mechanism to achieve real-time monitoring and promote collaborative sharing for vehicles. Blockchain, which can provide secure authentication and protected privacy, is a crucial technology. However, traditional cloud computing performs poorly in supplying low-latency and fast-response services for moving vehicles. In this situation, edge computing enabled Blockchain network appeals to be a promising method, where moving vehicles can access storage or computing resource and get authenticated from Blockchain edge nodes directly. In this paper, a hierarchical architecture is proposed consist of vehicular network layer, Blockchain edge layer and Block-chain network layer. Through a authentication mechanism adopting digital signature algorithm, it achieves trusted authentication and ensures valid verification. Moreover, a caching scheme based on many-to-many matching is proposed to minimize average delivery delay of vehicles. Simulation results prove that the proposed caching scheme has a better performance than existing schemes based on centralized model or edge caching strategy in terms of hit ratio and average delay.
Roman Overko, Rodrigo Ordóñez-Hurtado, Sergiy Zhuk, Pietro Ferraro · 6 authors
We introduce a permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) design for crowdsourced smart mobility applications. This architecture is based on a directed acyclic graph architecture (similar to the IOTA tangle) and uses both Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Position mechanisms to provide protection against spam attacks and malevolent actors. In addition to enabling individuals to retain ownership of their data and to monetize it, the architecture also is suitable for distributed privacy-preserving machine learning algorithms, is lightweight, and can be implemented in simple internet-of-things (IoT) devices. To demonstrate its efficacy, we apply this framework to reinforcement learning settings where a third party is interested in acquiring information from agents. In particular, one may be interested in sampling an unknown vehicular traffic flow in a city, using a DLT-type architecture and without perturbing the density, with the idea of realizing a set of virtual tokens as surrogates of real vehicles to explore geographical areas of interest. These tokens, whose authenticated position determines write access to the ledger, are thus used to emulate the probing actions of commanded (real) vehicles on a given planned route by "jumping" from a passing-by vehicle to another to complete the planned trajectory. Consequently, the environment stays unaffected (i.e., the autonomy of participating vehicles is not influenced by the algorithm), regardless of the number of emitted tokens. The design of such a DLT architecture is presented, and numerical results from large-scale simulations are provided to validate the proposed approach.
As Electric Vehicles (EVs) are becoming widely available, their secure management is crucial to fully enable their potential. For instance, for convenient charging, they may require quick authentication with the charging stations while they are on the go. As charging is frequently needed, exposing one's charging frequency to the stations may risk the exposure of privacy for the EV driver. Therefore, a mechanism is needed to hide EV information. In this paper, we propose using zero-knowledge proofs to achieve this goal. While zero-knowledge proofs can provide anonymous authentication, they require computation for generation of witnesses. Therefore, we assess the overhead of generating a witness and proof computation at the resource constrained on-board units (OBUs) which are deployed on EVs that utilize wireless communications for scheduling. The results indicate that computation overhead is minimal and can be delployed on resource contrained devices.
Jiawen Kang, Zehui Xiong, Dusit Niyato, Dong In Kim
The burgeoning vehicular networks generate a huge amount of sensing data. Data sharing among vehicles enables a number of valuable vehicular applications to improve driving safety and enhance vehicular services. To ensure security and traceability of data sharing, an efficient Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm is utilized to establish Blockchain-Enabled VEhicular Networks (BEVENs). Miners in DPoS include active miners and standby miners. The active miners are responsible for block generation and block verification. However, due to the limited number of active miners in DPoS, the compromised active miners may collude with each other to generate maliciously manipulated results of block verification. To prevent the internal collusion among the active miners, a newly generated block can be further verified and audited by the standby miners. To incentivize the participation of the miners in block verification, we adopt the contract theory to model the interactions between active miners and standby miners, where both block verification security and delay are taken into consideration. Numerical results demonstrate the security and efficiency of our schemes for data sharing in BEVENs.
Rakesh Shrestha, Rojeena Bajracharya, Anish Prasad Shrestha, Seung Yeob Nam
In the Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANET), the collection and dissemination of life-threatening traffic event information by vehicles are of utmost importance. However, traditional VANETs face several security issues. We propose a new type of blockchain to resolve critical message dissemination issues in the VANET. We create a local blockchain for real-world event message exchange among vehicles within the boundary of a country, which is a new type of blockchain suitable for the VANET. We present a public blockchain that stores the node trustworthiness and message trustworthiness in a distributed ledger that is appropriate for secure message dissemination.
This paper deals with the design of the secure network in an Enhanced Internet of Vehicles by using the Blockchain Governance Game (BGG). The BGG is a system model of a stochastic game to find best strategies towards preparation of preventing a network malfunction by an attacker and the paper applies this game model into the connected vehicle security. Analytically tractable results for decision-making parameters enable to predict the moment for safety operations and to deliver the optimal combination of the number of reserved nodes with the acceptance probability of backup nodes to protect a connected car. This research helps for whom considers the enhanced secure IoV architecture with the BGG within a decentralized network.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a model for autonomous cars to establish trusted parties by combining distributed ledgers and self-driving cars in the traffic to provide single version of the truth and thus build public trust. Design/methodology/approach The model, which the authors call Witness of Things, is based on keeping decision logs of autonomous vehicles in distributed ledgers through the use of vehicular networks and vehicle-to-vehicle/vehicle-to-infrastructure (or vice versa) communications. The model provides a single version of the truth and thus helps enable the autonomous vehicle industry, related organizations and governmental institutions to discover the true causes of road accidents and their consequences in investigations. Findings In this paper, the authors explored one of the potential effects of blockchain protocol on autonomous vehicles. The framework provides a solution for operating autonomous cars in an untrusted environment without needing a central authority. The model can also be generalized and applied to other intelligent unmanned systems. Originality/value This study proposes a blockchain protocol-based record-keeping model for autonomous cars to establish trusted parties in the traffic and protect single version of the truth.
Assisting traffic control is one of the most important applications on the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs). Traffic information provided by vehicles is desired since drivers or vehicle sensors are sensitive in perceiving or detecting nuances on roads. However, the availability and privacy preservation of this information are critical while conflicted with each other in the vehicular communication. In this paper, we propose a semicentralized mode with attribute-based blockchain in IoVs to balance the tradeoff between the availability and the privacy preservation. In this mode, a method of control-by-vehicles is used to control signals of traffic lights to increase traffic efficiency. Users are grouped their attributes such as locations and directions before starting the communication. The users reach an agreement on determining a temporary signal timing by interacting with each other without leaking privacy. Final decisions are verifiable to all users, even if they have no a priori agreement and processes of consensus. The mode not only achieves the aim of privacy preservation but also supports responsibility investigation for historical agreements via ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) and blockchain technology. Extensive experimental results demonstrated that our mode is efficient and practical.
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) networks have emerged as a new technology in modern electric power transmission networks. It allows bi-directional flow of communication and electricity between electric vehicles (EVs) and the Smart Grid (SG), in order to provide more sophisticated energy trading. However, due to the involvement of a huge amount of trading data and the presence of untrusted entities in the visiting networks, the underlying V2G infrastructure suffers from various security and privacy challenges. Although, several solutions have been proposed in the literature to address these problems, issues like lack of mutual authentication and anonymity, incapability to protect against several attack vectors, generation of huge overhead, and dependency on centralized infrastructures make security and privacy issues even more challenging. To address the above mentioned problems, in this paper, we propose a blockchain oriented hierarchical authentication mechanism for rewarding EVs. The overall process is broadly classified into the following phases: 1) System Initialization, 2) Registration, 3) Hierarchical Mutual Authentication, and 4) Consensus; wherein blockchain's distributed ledger has been employed for transaction execution in distributed V2G environments while Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) has been used for hierarchical authentication. The designed hierarchical authentication mechanism has been employed to preserve the anonymity of EVs and support mutual authentication between EVs, charging stations (CSs) and the central aggregator (CAG). Additionally, it also supports minimal communicational and computational overheads on resource constrained EVs. Further, formal security verification of the proposed scheme on widely accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool validates its safeness against different security attacks.
With the increasing development of advanced communication technologies, vehicles are becoming smarter and more connected. Due to the tremendous growth of various vehicular applications, a huge amount of data is generated through advanced on-board devices and is deemed critical to improve driving safety and enhance vehicular services. However, cloud based models often fall short in applications where latency and mobility are critical. In order to fully realize the potential of vehicular networks, the challenges of efficient communication and computation need to be addressed. In this direction, vehicular fog computing (VFC) has emerged which extends the concept of fog computing to conventional vehicular networks. It is a geographically distributed paradigm that has the potential to conduct time-critical and data-intensive tasks by pushing intelligence (i.e. computing resources, storage, and application services) in the vicinity of end vehicles. However secure and reliable transmission are of significant importance in highly-mobile vehicular networks in order to ensure the optimal Quality of Service (QoS). In this direction, several authentication mechanisms have been proposed in the literature but most of them are found unfit due to absence of decentralization, anonymity, and trust characteristics. Thus, an effective cross-datacenter authentication and key-exchange scheme based on blockchain and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is proposed in this paper. Here, the distributed ledger of blockchain is used for maintaining the network information while the highly secure ECC is employed for mutual authentication between vehicles and road side units (RSUs). Additionally, the proposed scheme is lightweight and scalable for the considered VFC setup. The performance evaluation results against the existing state-of-the-art reveal that the proposed scheme accomplishes enhanced security features with reduced computational and communicational overheads. Further, its extensive evaluation on the widely applicable Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool guarantee its safeness against different attack vectors.
While direct allocation of spectrum and evolved medium access protocols provide a base for ubiquitous wireless connectivity, the existing TCP/IP and OSI models were designed for wired networks and do not address open interconnection of air interfaces. Without an interconnection model for the air interface, existing network designs continue to tie wireless medium access to that of the backhaul provider for ownership of access and identity trust, resulting in limitations on functionality and coverage. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to access ownership and identity trust by extending the TCP network standard, under a new model we propose, named TCP-Air which integrates distributed ledger technologies directly at the air interface. Further, we present two use cases of the TCP-Air model, demonstrating applications not feasible under existing permissioned-access network designs.
The development of Internet of Things (IoT) has paved way for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are indispensable for ITS with intelligent vehicles (IV) as their key players. To ensure proper and reliable VANET operation, IVs need secure inter- and intra-network communication with trust and reliability of data (provenance). This paper aims to provide trust management in VANETs by proposing a trustless system model using blockchain and a certificate authority (CA) for registering IVs as well as revoking their registration if need be. Furthermore, to preserve data reliability, this paper uses physical unclonable functions (PUFs). Implementation of DrivMan shows that it is able to establish distributed trust management and enables secure data sharing while preserving the privacy of IVs.
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are a particular subclass of mobile ad hoc networks that raise a number of security challenges, notably from the way users authenticate the network. Authentication technologies based on existing security policies and access control rules in such networks assume full trust on Roadside Unit (RSU) and authentication servers. The disclosure of authentication parameters enables user's trace-ability over the network. VANETs' trusted entities (e.g. RSU) can utilize such information to track a user traveling behavior, violating user privacy and anonymity. In this paper, we proposed a novel, light-weight, Adaptive Group-based Zero Knowledge Proof-Authentication Protocol (AGZKP-AP) for VANETs. The proposed authentication protocol is capable of offering various levels of users' privacy settings based on the type of services available on such networks. Our scheme is based on the Zero-Knowledge-Proof (ZKP) crypto approach with the support of trade-off options. Users have the option to make critical decisions on the level of privacy and the amount of resources usage they prefer such as short system response time versus the number of private information disclosures. Furthermore, AGZKP-AP is incorporated with a distributed privilege control and revoking mechanism that render user's private information to law enforcement in case of a traffic violation.
As the Internet of Vehicle (IOV) being widely applied throughout our daily life, how to secure data privacy of each vehicle is nowadays a hot topic. Taking an aim of solving this problem, a privacy protection system on double-layered chain basis is designed to eliminate the said security risk during vehicle data communication. At the same time, the nontampering nature of the block chain is used to realize reasonable arbitration in traffic accident disputes, vehicle insurance claims, and other states of affairs. Specifically, an IOV double-layered chain model is constructed to simulate a semicentralized system that is convenient for government to supervise; also, a RSA protocol based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is designed to bring safety and zero-knowledge property to the system; finally, we give the application scenario of this IOV privacy protection system based on double-layered chain that it can be widely used in vehicle-sharing industry. The communication costs, respectively, under double-layered chain and single-layered chain frameworks, are compared to prove that the double-layered structure does save cost. Thus an IOV privacy scheme that is safer and more cost-efficient is given.
In this era of rapid growth of vehicles, the ratio of road accident increases day by day. Nowadays, Traffic incidents are persistent problems in both developed and developing countries which result in huge loss of life and property. No one in this world is ready to gaze what's happening around them. Nobody cares even when an accident occurs. This paper provides an innovative solution by developing an Accident Alert Message System using an Android Smartphone Application that can be used from the accident zone. The application uses GPS technology for location mapping and sends an alert and notification of an accident. The generated accident alert message is endorsed by the nearby registered users who also witness the accident to ensure the increased reputation of the message. Based on the endorsement of the message, the system will instantly transmit the location of the accident to the nearby emergency services. In this case, users usually lack the enthusiasm to generate or endorse alert messages because they might fear that their privacy will be breached. At the same time, users do not benefit from generating or endorsing alert messages which also makes them lack the enthusiasm or motivation to respond to messages. In order to provide a solution to resolve these issues, this paper presents a novel privacy-preserving Blockchain - Based Incentive Mechanism for Accident Alert Message System. The main objective of the paper is to encourage the users to generate and endorse accident alert messages from the accident zone without revealing the user's identity. Also, some incentives to the users are paid to the message generators and endorsers and the transactions get stored based on the Blockchain technology; hence the privacy of the user is preserved. Our proposed system ensures the reliability of alert messages without revealing the privacy of the user and is reliable and efficient in the non-fully-trusted environment.
Increasingly, connected cars are becoming a decentralized data platform. With greater autonomy, they have growing needs for computation and perceiving the world around them through sensors. While todays generation of vehicles carry all the necessary sensor data and computation on board, we envision a future where vehicles can cooperate to increase their perception of the world beyond their immediate view, resulting in greater safety, coordination and more comfortable experience for their human occupants. In order for vehicles to obtain data, compute and other services from other vehicles or road side infrastructure, it is important to be able to make micro payments for those services and for the services to run seamlessly despite the challenges posed by mobility and ephemeral interactions with a dynamic set of neighboring devices. We present MOTIVE, a trusted and decentralized framework that allows vehicles to make peer to peer micropayments for data, compute and other services obtained from other vehicles or road side infrastructure within radio range. The framework utilizes distributed ledger technologies including smart contracts to enable autonomous operation and trusted interactions between vehicles and nearby entities.
Due to exponential growth in the daily usage of vehicles, the traffic congestion and roadside accidents are increasing day by day. The communication among vehicles is critical to avoid the emergencies and to address the issue of congestion of vehicles. Internet of vehicles provides the communication channel between the vehicles, but existing solutions require a centralized communication system to distribute the message and to authenticate the source. This centralized infrastructure is subject to disturb the vehicular communication in case of server breakdown or due to any natural disaster where hardware stops working. Also, the centralized system proves to be costly as the communication of each vehicle necessitates access to the central server resulting in the more resource requirement. A secure distributed system is required to avoid the emergencies and reduce the traffic rate. To address the issues, we proposed a secure distributed message-passing framework that does not require a centralized server, and it rates the credibility of message source using blockchain technology. The messages in the proposed system are forwarded through dedicated short-range communication protocol. To validate the proposed system, we have performed different simulations using SUMO, OMNET, and VEINS. The results demonstrated an increase in the average speed of vehicles that showed a reduced congestion rate. Moreover, our system identified the malicious vehicles with 77.1% accuracy.
In vehicular cloud computing, a number of vehicle users act as nodes and communicate with each other to obtain location based services and data. Malicious users or service providers can collect the information of locations travelled and application accessed from vehicle users. Therefore, the authentication of vehicle users becomes challenge with preserving their actual identity and location privacy. In this paper we propose an efficient multi factor authentication scheme for vehicular cloud computing environment. This scheme uses zero knowledge based algorithm for user identity verification. It provides good privacy preservation, so that the adversaries are not able to succeed in tracing any vehicles. The simulation outcomes confirms that the proposed scheme achieves superior compared to existing schemes in terms of computational cost. Therefore, our scheme is appropriate for providing secure solution in vehicular cloud.