Blockchain-based Security and Privacy-aware Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANETs) is a ubiquitous network where vehicles communicate with other vehicles and Road-side unit (RSU). In intelligent traffic system (ITS), Information sharing among the vehicles is an important element. However, reliability and authentication are major security concerns in VANETs. Existing authentication schemes depends on a central trusted authority. Hence, they lack in privacy-preservation due to revealing of real identity of vehicle, and extended certificates that leads to the authentication delay and computational overhead. In this paper we propose a blockchain-based Security and Privacy-aware (BSPA) Protocol which provides integrity of the system and real identities can only be revealed to the certified vehicles. Vehicles acquire their pseudo identities and digital signatures from the Trusted Authority (TA). Pseudo identities are stored in the immutable shared ledger of blockchain. RSU accessed the decentralized blockchain and verifies the identity of the vehicle. The proposed approach is implemented using OMNET++ network simulator and results are validated by comparing with hybrid cryptography-based approaches.