Using a Random Secret Pre-Distribution Scheme to Implement Message Authentication in VANETs

In recent years, the development of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) has increased the popularity of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). A VANET is designed to enable vehicles to exchange information about traffic or vehicle conditions to help other vehicles avoid traffic accidents or traffic jams. To resist malicious attacks, all vehicles must be anonymous and their routings must be untraceable, but still verifiable. The vehicles must trust each other and communicate confidentially. In a VANET, Road Side Units (RSU) are installed on traffic signs or streetlights to help vehicles maintain anonymity, to authenticate messages, or to support confidentiality. However, the coverage of an RSU is limited and the cost of widespread installation is high. RSU installations are incremental, so messages must be authenticated using dense RSUs or sparse RSUs. In this paper, the concept of random key pre-distribution that is used in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is modified to random secret pre-distribution (RSP), which integrates identity-based cryptography (IBC) to produce a message authentication scheme for VANETs in a sparse RSU environment. In the proposed scheme, vehicles follow a process to determine a common secret, allowing them to OPEN ACCESS Appl. Sci. 2015, 5 974 authenticate each other and obtain the pairing value as a key for use in message authentication and private communication. Evaluation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms related schemes.