Securing Information Exchange in VANETs by Using Pairing-Based Cryptography

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks are mainly implemented to enable the interchange of huge amount of information among vehicles and between vehicles and control entities such as road side units or base stations, providing support for a comfortable and safe driving experience. However, due to the recent proliferation of cybersecurity threats, securing such a critical exchange of information becomes a fundamental prerequisite. In this paper, we propose a novel security scheme based on bilinear pairing-based cryptography to improve the security of the information exchanged in VANETs. Such scheme relies on the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem to provide anonymity and robust security features, and on Message Authentication Codes for verifying the vehicles' identities. The proposed solution is able to achieve mutual authentication between involved entities and prevent impersonation, replay and insider attacks, at the expense of minimum overhead so that also big-data scale communications can be safely supported in the VANET environment.