NextGenV2V: Authenticated V2V communication for next generation vehicular network using (2, n)-threshold scheme

Securing end-to-end communication in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) is crucial due to zero trust between the communicating entities. Additionally, the underlying communication needs to be lightweight in many cases, especially when vehicles are moving at high speeds or deploying applications like Vehicular Sensor Networks (VSN) and next-generation vehicular networks with densely deployed small-cells and micro-cells. The traditional VANET facilitates two types of communication: Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication to establish trust between a Vehicle User (Vi) and roadside infrastructure, followed by Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication for information exchange. Unlike existing protocols that encounter security issues and high authentication delay as they require communication with a Trusted Authority (TA) every time Vi needs authentication or re-authentication, we present a symmetric key-based an authenticated V2V communication for next generation vehicular network using (2, n)-threshold scheme, called NextGenV2V. In NextGenV2V, authentication of a newly visited Vi is performed with the help of TA, but re-authentication of a pre-authenticated Vi is done without the support of TA. This significantly reduces communication overhead during re-authentication and improves the overall authentication delay. NextGenV2V is designed in such a way that at least 2 out of n registered vehicle users must cooperate to compute a shared secret key. This feature ensures improved security, as attackers cannot breach the system's security unless two or more vehicles are compromised. Furthermore, considering that an attacker cannot physically be present in more than one location simultaneously, the system's security remains intact even if a current vehicle is compromised. The proposed protocol is also verified to resist known security attacks, both formally and informally. To demonstrate the effectiveness of NextGenV2V, a comparative performance analysis is presented that proves its suitability for next-generation vehicular networks.