An Anonymous and Revocable Authentication Protocol for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications

In the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), the communication between the vehicle and other nodes is performed in an open channel, which puts forward the requirements for its privacy security and message integrity. Most previous protocols either frequently verify identities before accepting traffic information or do not involve identity revocation mechanisms, and they may assume that third parties are fully trusted. To further solve the above problem, a certificateless-based anonymous and revocable authentication protocol for vehicle-to-vehicle communications is proposed in this article. Our construction separates the identity authentication process from the traffic message verification, which not only avoids the disadvantage of a frequent identity revocation list (IRL) checking but also reduces the overhead in communication and message authentication. These features can make “identity authentication once, broadcast efficiency” really happen. In addition, since our authentication process is based on certificateless signature, it can resist malicious key generation centers (KGCs) and road-side units (RSUs), which is very necessary for privacy-sensitive application scenarios. Finally, the performance analyses show that our proposal is superior to the existing schemes in terms of authentication speed and communication overhead.

I. Introduction

With the progress and extensive deployment of wireless communication technology, especially the gradual maturity of the driverless technology, which requires timely access to road and traffic information. The automobile manufacturing and telecommunications industries will equip each vehicle with wireless devices, which can enable vehicles to communicate with each other and with roadside infrastructure to help people or artificial intelligence better plan their journey and improve their driving experience. Such a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) essentially provides us with an ideal method to collect dynamic traffic information and sense various physical quantities related to traffic assignment with very low cost and high precision. VANET has great potential in improving vehicle and road safety, traffic efficiency, convenience, and comfort for drivers and passengers. However, a series of problems related to message security, including message integrity, privacy protection, revocability, and traceability, must be considered before it can be deployed in the real environment [1], [2]. Only by solving the security problems reasonably, VANET can be applied on a large scale.