EPAS: Efficient Privacy-preserving Authentication Scheme for VANETs-based Emergency Communication

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) can provide participants with security services and entertainment information during the driving. To guarantee correct and smooth operations of VANETs, it is necessary to achieve efficient authentication with user privacy preserving. Current solutions either cannot satisfy privacy requirements, or are not efficient in message verification. Moreover, all the existing schemes are RSU-based. We, for the first time, apply VANETs to emergency communication during disaster rescue, and effective authentication scheme is proposed in accordance with the actual environment, where there is no fixed road-side unit (RSU). In this paper, we present an efficient identity based signature scheme EPAS, which satisfies conditional privacy requirements through software solution. In aspect of efficiency, both lightweight signature and batch verification are employed to provide effective authentication. Extensive theoretical and experimental analyses demonstrate the security and efficiency of EPAS in terms of privacy-preserving and low authentication delay.