Privacy-Enabled Probabilistic Verification in Broadcast Authentication for Vehicular Networks

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) authentication schemes need to consider mobility and rapidly changing topologies in addition to an unreliable wireless channel communication. IEEE 1609.2, VANET security standard, suggests Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for the authentication of Vehicleto-Vehicle (V2V) messages. However, it has the drawback of expensive computations for verification. Therefore, we provide a smart probabilistic verification strategy for the authentication of V2V communication. We propose a practical and efficient strategy that makes use of secure ECDSA but still decreases the computation time for the most relevant packets. Furthermore, we maintain conditional privacy of vehicles through a lightweight vehicle registration process with a regional registering authority. In comparison to IEEE 1609.2, our algorithm reduces the packet loss ratio that occurs due to messages expiring in the verification queue.