A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON VARIOUS

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATION SCHEMES IN

VEHICULAR NETWORKS
1

Sandhya Kohli, Department of Computer Science, RIMT, Mandi Gobindgarh

Rakesh Kumar, Department of Information Technology, M.M. University, Mullana, Ambala
3
Bandan Jot Kaur, Department of Computer Science, RIMT, Mandi Gobindgarh

ersimranpreet1@gmail.com, 2raakeshdhiman@gmail.com, 3bandan_arora@yahoo.in

ABSTRACT
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) is a subclass of Mobile
ad hoc networks which provides a distinguish approach for
intelligent transport system (ITS).An effective and robust
operations as well as security and privacy are critical for
deployment of Vehicular ad hoc Networks (VANET). Efficient
and easy to manage security and privacy enhancing
mechanisms are essential for the wide spread adoption of the
VANET technology. In this paper we have compared the
various security methods and draw a conclusion that Digital
signature scheme is an efficient method for message
authentication.
KEYWORDS: Vehicular Networks, Digital Signatures, Pair
wise Keys, Group Keys.
1. INTRODUCTION
Vehicular communication plays a central role to create safer
and more efficient driving conditions. IVC provides variety of
applications for safety, improving traffic efficiency, driver
assistance & infotainment. To enhance the safety & efficiency
of transportation system vehicles and roadside infrastructure
units (RSUs) i.e. network nodes will be equipped with
onboard processing & wireless communication modules.
Various safety related applications supported by Vehicular
networks are: - 1. Safety related applications e.g early warning
messages, 2.Best effort applications e.g. Infotainment, traffic
optimization, 3. Secure transactions e.g. toll collection. Mostly
the critical messages in VANET are broadcast oriented and
should be delivered in short time. These messages must be
secure and should not leak personnel, identifying or linkable
information to unauthorized parties.
The inherent characteristics of VANET like relatively
uncontrolled operational environment ([1], [2]) the high
mobility of the nodes and the wireless medium make them a
suitable target for abuse and introduce a number of security
challenges to the research community. A number of passive
and active attacks against the vehicular nodes and the
infrastructure has been pointed out .The self organizing
operation and unique features of Vehicular communication [3]
are a double edge sword: a rich set of tools are offered to
drivers and authorities but a formidable set of abuses and
attacks becomes possible. Hence the security of vehicular

network is indispensable because otherwise these systems

could make antisocial and criminal behavior easier. Due to
tight coupling between applications with rigid requirement s
and the networking fabric makes the vehicular security hard to
achieve.
The paper is organized in the following ways: In Section 2
we present the Security Needs. In Section 3 we describe the
Attacks on Vehicular Networks .In Section 4 we describe
Security Architecture. In Section 5 we compare the various
security methods and draw the conclusion table and In Section
6 we present the Open research areas in VANET Security.
2. SECURITY NEEDS
A Comprehensive set of security mechanism s integrated into
the VC system is critical for their deployment. Otherwise, the
efficiency of the transportation system and the physical safety
of the driver will be jeopardized. Depending on the
applications the various security mechanisms proposed for VC
should assure some or all the following properties:Authentication: - The system must assure that the messages
generated by trusted source. Vehicles reaction to events should
base on legitimate messages. Therefore we need to
authenticate the sender of these messages.
Data Consistency: -The legitimacy of messages also
encompasses their consistency with similar ones, because
sometimes the sender can be legitimate while message
contains the false data. This is also known as plausibility.
Location Accuracy: -is very crucial security requirement, this
is due to the fact that accuracy of any information on
accidents and other traffic conditions depends on location
accuracy.
Availability: -Some attacks like DOS attacks are very severe
that they bring down the network. So availability should be
supported by alternative means.
Real Time Constraints:- Due to dynamic speed in Vehicular
networks , strict time constraints should be respected.
3. ATTACKS ON VEHICULAR NETWORKS
The nature and resources of adversary [4] will largely
determine the scope of defense needed to secure vehicular
networks. In this section we describe the various security
threats faced by vehicular networks we categorize the attacks
on the bases of types of attacker and then on types of attacks.

3.1 Types of Attackers: - a. Insider/Outsider: - Insider

attacker is the authenticated member of the network having a
certified public key. Outsider is considered as the intruder in
the network. An Insider attacker is much more harmful than
outsider, as he is aware of all the public and associated private
keys. b. Malicious/Rational: - Malicious attacker deliberately
attempts to cause harm. He seeks no personnel benefits from
the attack and aims to harm the members of network or
network functionality. Rational attacker seeks personnel
benefits from the attack and thus his attack is more predictable
in terms of target, causalities and profit. c. Pranksters: Pranksters include bored teenagers probing for vulnerabilities
and hackers seeking fame through their exploits. d. Local or
Extended: - An attacker can have limited scope even if he
controls several entities. An extended attacker controls several
entities scattered across network thus extending his scope.
3.2 Types of Attacks: - In this paper we categorize the types
of attacks into two categories 3.2.1. Basic Attacks 3.2.2
Sophisticated Attacks.
3.2.1 Basic Attacks: - consist of following: Bogus Information Attack:- In this case attacker diffused the
false information in the network to affect the behavior of other
driver for e.g. attacker wants to divert the entire traffic to
specific location just to make the path clear for his
unauthorized activities.
Disruption of Network Operation or Denial of Service
(DOS) Attack: - In this attack the aim is to prevent the
network from carrying out safety related function. There are
many ways to perform this attack like Jamming in transit
traffic tampering. In jamming the attackers deliberately
generates
interfacing
transmissions
that
prevent
communication within the reception ranges. The DOS attack,
which includes jamming the wireless channel, thus interrupts
all communications. In Transit Traffic Tampering in DOS also
proves very fatal because in this any node acts as a relay and
can disrupt communication of other nodes. It can drop or
corrupt messages.
Cheating With Sensor Info (Identity, Speed or Positioning
info):- In this type of attack an attacker can alter their
perceived position, speed, direction etc. In order to escape
liability especially in case of accidents. Some time the attacker
alters the security material stored in tamper proof hardware
thus making his clone.
ID Disclosure: - Id disclosure of other vehicles in order to
track their location. This is Big Brother Scenario where global
observer can monitor trajectories of targeted vehicles and use
this data for range of purpose. To monitor the global observer
on leverage on the roadside infrastructure or the vehicle
around its target. . The attacker in this case is passive, it does
not make use of cameras, physical pursuit or onboard tacking
device to uncover the identity of his target.
Masquerading: - Attacker actively pretends to be another
vehicle by using false identities and can have rational or
malicious objectives.
3.2.2 Sophisticated attacks: - consists of following
Hidden Vehicle: In this attack a vehicle broadcasting
warnings will listen for feed back from its neighbor and stop

its broadcast if it realizes that one of its neighbors is better

position for warning other vehicles. This reduces congestion
on wireless channel. In the hidden vehicle attack an attacker
vehicle behaves like a neighbor vehicle placed at a better
position for message forwarding, thus leading to silencing of
original vehicle and making hidden, thereby introduces the
false information into the network.
Tunnel: - Since GPS signals disappears in the tunnel, attacker
may exploit [4], this temporary loss of positioning information
to inject false in data once the vehicle leaves the tunnel and
before it reaches and authentic position. The physical tunnel
can also be replaced by jammed area by the attackers; it will
also result in same effects.
Wormhole: - In wireless networking the wormhole attack
consist of tunneling packets between two remote nodes. An
attacker that controls at least two entities remote from each
other and a high speed communication link between them can
tunnel packets broadcasted in one location to another, thus
introducing erroneous messages in the destination area.
Bush Telegraph: -This also like bogus information attack, the
difference is that in this case the attacker controls several
entities spread over several wireless hops. This attack adds
incremental errors to the information at each hop.
4. SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: VANETs are typically
hybrid networks [5] i.e. communication takes place between
two or more vehicles in ad-hoc environment (Vehicle to
Vehicle-V2V) and between vehicles and roadside
infrastructure (Vehicle to infrastructure- V2I). These vehicles
have sufficient power and computational/ Storage resources
required to run cryptographic mechanism and to record history
of emergency events and messages. The various components
used to protect Vehicular communication against wide range
of threats are: Event data recorder (EDR), Tamper proof
device (TPD), Electronic License plates, vehicular PKI,
Digital signatures.
Event Data Recorder (EDR): EDRs will be used in vehicles
to register to all parameters especially during critical
situations like accidents. Data stored in EDR will be used for
crash reconstruction and to verify the reason for casualty.
EDR also used to collect information related to driving habits
like average speed and no. of driving hours.
Temper Proof Device (TPD): The user of secret information
like private keys incurs the need for a TPD in each vehicle.
TPD will keep the material safe from attackers thus
decreasing the possibility the information of leakage. Since
car electronics is vulnerable to attacks especially the data
buses, which are responsible for transferring information and
control commands between the different electronic
components of a vehicle. The TPD device will take care of
signing and verifying messages so that they cannot be altered
if the data buses are hacked. To provide security the TPD has
its own battery, which can be recharged from the vehicles.
Electronic License Plate (ELP): ELPs are unique
cryptographically verifiable numbers that will be used as
traditional license plates. The advantage of ELPs is that they
will automate the paper based document checkups of vehicles.
It will help in detection of stolen cars [2], identifying vehicles

on crossing country borders or during annual technical

checkups. An ELP is issued by government or an Electronic
chassis no. (ECN) issued by vehicle manufacturer [4]. Since
the ELPs the electronic equivalent of physical license plate, it
should be installed in the vehicle by using similar procedure,
which is followed by government transportation authority at
the time of vehicle registration. Anonymous keys are
preloaded by transportation authorities or the manufacturer.
Moreover, ELPs are fixed and accompany the vehicle for the
long duration while anonymous keys sets have to be
periodically renewed after their lifetime expired. Both the
ELPs and anonymous keys should be preloaded in each
vehicle with certification authorities (CA) public key.
Vehicular PKI: A PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) is typical
[2], security architecture used for networks where the
presence of online authorities is not always guaranteed. A
Vehicular PKI is a good choice for enabling IVC security. In
VPKI, each vehicle is equipped with one or more
private/public Key payers certified by certification authorities.
So that a message sender will use the private keys to generate
digital signatures on messages that need to be certified and
message receivers will have corresponding public key to
verify the validity of messages. Although this architecture
seems very convenient for vehicular networks, but some
problems still exists. One of them is key distribution, which
allows message receiver to obtain the public keys of message
senders. Other problem is certificate revocation by CA, which
invalidates some public/private key payers. A third problem
of PKI is increased overhead in terms of digital signature sizes
and verification, transmission delays. Assuming the key
structure certified by certain CA, a certificate Cert v[PuKi] of
the ith anonymous key PuKi of the vehicle should include the
following PKI
Certv[PuKi] = PuKi |SigPrKCA[PuKi |IDCA]
Where PrKCA is a CAs private key and ID CA is the unique ID
of CA.
Digital Signatures: The simplest and the most efficient
method is to assign each vehicle a set of public/private key
pair that will allow the vehicle to digitally sign messages and
authenticate itself to receivers. Due to the liability issue
present in VANET, a self-trust management approach such as
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is not satisfactory. These public
keys should be issued and signed by a trusted authority. The
certificate issued by a authority implies the use of PKI. Under
the PKI solution each vehicle send a safety message, sign it
with its private key and includes the CAs (Certification
Authority) Certificate as
V*:M, SigPrKV [M|T],CertV
Where V designate the sending vehicle, * represents all the
messages receivers, M is a message, | is the concatenation
operator and T is the timestamp of ensure message freshness,
CertV is the public key certificate of vehicle. The receivers of
message extract and verify the public key of vehicle using the
certificate and then verify the signature by using its certified
public key. If the messages send in emergency context then
this message along with signature and certificate should be

sold in the EDR for further potential investigation in the

emergency.
Pair wise Keys: If we assume that each vehicle will broadcast
its encryption certificate, when it detects [5], a new neighbor.
Vehicles V and V* establish a symmetric secret key K as
following: One of the vehicle V* chooses a random key K
appends a timestamp T* and sign the message with its private
signature key SKsv*. It then sends the result to V, encrypted
with its public encryption key PKev. V decrypts the message,
verifies the signature to obtain the session key K, then
conforms the receipt of session key by signing and
acknowledgement with its signature SKsv, appends its
certificate CERTsv and return the result encrypted with session
key K. The following messages must be sent by using pair
wise keys:
V* : CERTse,
VV : {SIGSKSV*(K||T*),CERT SV*}PKeV
VV* : [SIGSKSV(K||T),CERT SV]K,
Group Keys: In this case a group leader vehicle L will be
periodically broadcast its encryption certificate. All other
vehicles of the group return their encryption certificates
CERTeVi, encrypted with public key of group leader, PKeL who
chooses a group session key K, sign it with its private
signature key SKL and transmit this privately to group
members.
L* : CERTel,
ViL : {CERTeVi}PKeL
LVi : {SIGSKLSV(K||T),CERT SL] PKeVi,
Where PKeVi is the public encryption key of vehicle VI and T
is time stamp.
5. COCLUSION: We compare the performance of different
authentication mechanism discuss in the paper like digital
signatures, pair wise keys and group keys. If we use the
digital signature method on following messages format:
V*:M, SigPrKV [M|T],CertV then the size of the overhead is
the same for each message and is equal to 56+84=140
bytes/vehicle* message. If we used pair wise keys as
authentication for following message format:
AB:{B|K|T}PuKB, SigPrKA [B|K|T]
then total overhead to send one message is (56/M+28)(N-1)
bytes/V* message. The total number of messages is M*(N1)/Vehicle. If we used group key as authentication method for
following message format
L*:HA,{K}PuKA,HB,{K} PuKB,HC,{K} PuKC,SigPrKL
the total overhead is 56/M+28+140/10+336/10=56/M+75.6
bytes/vehicle*message. The total number of message is M+
(M*1/10+M*3/10)/N=M(1+0.4/N)/vehicle.
Overhead
in
terms of
Cost
Bandwidth
consumption
Complexity in
transmission

Digital
Signature
Low
Saved

Pair Wise Keys

Group Keys

High
Wasted

High
Wasted

More

Less

Less

Table A

[4]

[5]

[6]
[7]
[8]

Figure 1:Comparison of various authentication schemes

So by comparing the overhead of these three authentication
approach, we notice that pair-wise keys result in bigger
overhead then digital signatures when there are few vehicles,
group keys save 54% of message overhead, but group key
establishment and membership updation require more
messages than digital signature approach. So we conclude
that digital signature is an efficient method for authentication
as it saves the bandwidth consumption but it requires more
complex implementation for group protocols.
6. Open Research issues: Identity authentication vs
Message Authentication: Most security mechanism proposed
for vehicular networks focus on authentication of the identity
of sending On Board Unit (OBU), rather than correctness of
data. Identification of the OBU that sends a message is
unnecessary in vehicular networks; more important task in
VANET is detection & correction of malicious data, which is
enforced into the network by insider attacker. An Efficient
scheme is required to develop to identify the data from a
malicious car & then discard it
Balance Anonymity and Accountability: To ensure
accountability all messages need to be uniquely signed,
signature allows the tracing of true identity of signer. However
unconditional anonymity may be abused, undesirable uses of
anonymity includes sending bogus information, denial of
service attacks and spam.
Efficiency of Cryptography algorithms: Efficiency is a
major concern in VANET and requires real time transmission
of data; most security mechanisms proposed earlier will result
in significant overhead. The security services like
confidentiality, authenticity and integrity are often provided
by cryptographic mechanisms like secret key algorithm and
public key algorithms. So the need is to reduce this overhead
from security system

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