An evaluation framework for pre-distribution strategies of certificates in VANETs

Security and privacy in vehicular communication are expected to be ensured by the pervasive use of pseudonymous certificates and signed messages. The design and establishment of necessary public key infrastructure and hierarchies of certificate authorities is ongoing in industry consortia, such as the Car-to-Car Communication Consortium. The privacy preserving dissemination of pseudonymous certificates is however still expected to be limited to single-hop exchanges between vehicles. This limitation to one-hop strategies might not be ideal, especially considering the importance of ensuring trustworthy stateless information exchange upon reception of the very first communication packets. We propose to investigate multi-hop predistribution strategies for certificates to significantly reduce this first encounter problem.