A Fog Computing and Blockchain-based Anonymous Authentication Scheme to Enhance Security in VANET Environments
Received: 7 August 2024 | Revised: 26 August 2024 | Accepted: 29 August 2024 | Online: 2 February 2025
Corresponding author: Ali A. Yassin
Abstract
Authentication of vehicles and users, integrity of exchanged messages, and privacy preservation are essential features in VANETs. VANETs are used to collect information on road conditions, vehicle location and speed, and traffic congestion data. The open exchange of information within VANETs poses serious security threats. Furthermore, existing schemes have higher communication and computational costs, making them incompatible with resource-constrained VANET applications. This study proposes a multifactor authentication and privacy-preserving security scheme for VANETs based on blockchain and fog computing to meet all these requirements. The proposed scheme uses fingerprints and Quick Response (QR) codes as a multifactor to authenticate vehicle users and fog-cloud computing techniques to reduce the computational burden on RSUs and improve service quality and resilience. Additionally, the scheme synchronizes a consistent ledger across all RSUs using blockchain technology to store and distribute vehicle authentication statuses. Through a thorough comparison with relevant current protocols, the scheme shows a much-reduced computing expense and communication burden in situations with high vehicle density within a timeframe of 6.3846 ms and 544 bytes for communication costs. In addition, the proposed scheme demonstrates a successful balance between efficacy and complexity, protecting confidentiality, anonymous authentication, and ensuring integrity and conditional tracking. Formal and informal security analysis showed that the proposed scheme is more reliable, practical, and secure against many hostile attacks, such as modification attacks, 51% attacks, Sybil attacks, and MITM attacks.
Keywords:
VANET, blockchain, fog computing, fingerprint, QR code, anonymous authentication, security and privacy, integrityDownloads
References
H. Hasrouny, A. E. Samhat, C. Bassil, and A. Laouiti, "VANet security challenges and solutions: A survey," Vehicular Communications, vol. 7, pp. 7–20, Jan. 2017.
X. Li, T. Liu, M. S. Obaidat, F. Wu, P. Vijayakumar, and N. Kumar, "A Lightweight Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocol for VANETs," IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 3547–3557, Sep. 2020.
M. Umar, S. H. Islam, K. Mahmood, S. Ahmed, Z. Ghaffar, and M. A. Saleem, "Provable Secure Identity-Based Anonymous and Privacy-Preserving Inter-Vehicular Authentication Protocol for VANETS Using PUF," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 70, no. 11, pp. 12158–12167, Aug. 2021.
M. A. Al Sibahee, V. O. Nyangaresi, Z. A. Abduljabbar, C. Luo, J. Zhang, and J. Ma, "Two-Factor Privacy-Preserving Protocol for Efficient Authentication in Internet of Vehicles Networks," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 11, no. 8, pp. 14253–14266, Apr. 2024.
M. Ma, D. He, H. Wang, N. Kumar, and K.-K. R. Choo, "An Efficient and Provably Secure Authenticated Key Agreement Protocol for Fog-Based Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 8065–8075, Jul. 2019.
F. B. Günay, E. Öztürk, T. Çavdar, Y. S. Hanay, and A. ur R. Khan, "Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) Localization Techniques: A Survey," Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 3001–3033, Jun. 2021.
M. A. Alazzawi, K. Chen, A. A. Yassin, H. Lu, and F. Abedi, "Authentication and Revocation Scheme for VANETs Based on Chinese Remainder Theorem," in 2019 IEEE 21st International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications; IEEE 17th International Conference on Smart City; IEEE 5th International Conference on Data Science and Systems (HPCC/SmartCity/DSS), Zhangjiajie, China, Aug. 2019, pp. 1541–1547.
I. M. Hassan and K. R. Hassan, "Vehicular Social Networks and Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks, Applications, Modelling Tools and Challenges: A Survey," International Journal of Computer Applications, vol. 176, no. 25, pp. 32–38, May 2020.
R. Mohan, G. Prabakaran, and T. Priyaradhikadevi, "Seagull Optimization Algorithm with Share Creation with an Image Encryption Scheme for Secure Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 13000–13005, Feb. 2024.
W. Othman, M. Fuyou, K. Xue, and A. Hawbani, "Physically Secure Lightweight and Privacy-Preserving Message Authentication Protocol for VANET in Smart City," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 70, no. 12, pp. 12902–12917, Sep. 2021.
P. Wang and Y. Liu, "SEMA: Secure and Efficient Message Authentication Protocol for VANETs," IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 846–855, Mar. 2021.
M. A. Alazzawi, M. T. Almalchy, A. Al-Shammari, A. S. Al-Khaleefa, and H. M. Albehadili, "LSKA-ID: A lightweight security and key agreement protocol based on an identity for vehicular communication," TELKOMNIKA (Telecommunication Computing Electronics and Control), vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 784–796, Aug. 2023.
N. B. Truong, G. M. Lee, and Y. Ghamri-Doudane, "Software defined networking-based vehicular Adhoc Network with Fog Computing," in 2015 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM), Ottawa, Canada, May 2015, pp. 1202–1207.
L. Song, G. Sun, H. Yu, X. Du, and M. Guizani, "FBIA: A Fog-Based Identity Authentication Scheme for Privacy Preservation in Internet of Vehicles," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 69, no. 5, pp. 5403–5415, Feb. 2020.
B. Liu, X. L. Yu, S. Chen, X. Xu, and L. Zhu, "Blockchain Based Data Integrity Service Framework for IoT Data," in 2017 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS), Honolulu, HI, USA, Jun. 2017, pp. 468–475.
S. M. Umran, S. Lu, Z. A. Abduljabbar, and V. O. Nyangaresi, "Multi-chain blockchain based secure data-sharing framework for industrial IoTs smart devices in petroleum industry," Internet of Things, vol. 24, Dec. 2023, Art. no. 100969.
N. Sapra, I. Shaikh, and A. Dash, "Impact of Proof of Work (PoW)-Based Blockchain Applications on the Environment: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Risk and Financial Management, vol. 16, no. 4, Apr. 2023, Art. no. 218.
W. Wang et al., "A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks," IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 22328–22370, 2019.
M. Raya and J. P. Hubaux, "Securing vehicular ad hoc networks," Journal of Computer Security, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 39–68, Jan. 2007.
T. Gao, Y. Li, N. Guo, and I. You, "An anonymous access authentication scheme for vehicular ad hoc networks under edge computing," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, vol. 14, no. 2, Feb. 2018, Art. no. 1550147718756581.
Y. Ming and H. Cheng, "Efficient Certificateless Conditional Privacy-Preserving Authentication Scheme in VANETs," Mobile Information Systems, vol. 2019, no. 1, 2019, Art. no. 7593138.
M. A. Alazzawi, H. Lu, A. A.Yassin, K. Chen, "Robust Conditional Privacy-Preserving Authentication based on Pseudonym Root with Cuckoo Filter in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks," KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems, vol. 13, no. 12, Dec. 2019.
A. Bhargava and S. Verma, "DUEL: Dempster Uncertainty-Based Enhanced- Trust Level Scheme for VANET," IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 15079–15090, Sep. 2022.
Q. Xie, Z. Ding, W. Tang, D. He, and X. Tan, "Provable Secure and Lightweight Blockchain-Based V2I Handover Authentication and V2V Broadcast Protocol for VANETs," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 72, no. 12, pp. 15200–15212, Sep. 2023.
Q. Tao, H. Ding, T. Jiang, and X. Cui, "B-DSPA: A Blockchain-Based Dynamically Scalable Privacy-Preserving Authentication Scheme in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1385–1397, Jan. 2024.
J. Zhang, J. Cui, H. Zhong, Z. Chen, and L. Liu, "PA-CRT: Chinese Remainder Theorem Based Conditional Privacy-Preserving Authentication Scheme in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks," IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 722–735, Mar. 2021.
L. Wei, J. Cui, H. Zhong, I. Bolodurina, C. Gu, and D. He, "A Decentralized Authenticated Key Agreement Scheme Based on Smart Contract for Securing Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 4318–4333, Feb. 2024.
S. J. Payattukalanirappel, P. V. Vamattathil, and M. Z. C. Cheeramthodika, "A Blockchain-assisted lightweight privacy preserving authentication protocol for peer-to-peer communication in vehicular ad-hoc network," Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 4013–4032, Nov. 2024.
K. Rabieh, M. M. E. A. Mahmoud, and M. Younis, "Privacy-Preserving Route Reporting Schemes for Traffic Management Systems," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 66, no. 3, pp. 2703–2713, Mar. 2017.
J. Shen, D. Liu, X. Chen, J. Li, N. Kumar, and P. Vijayakumar, "Secure Real-Time Traffic Data Aggregation With Batch Verification for Vehicular Cloud in VANETs," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 807–817, Jan. 2020.
C. Zhang, R. Lu, X. Lin, P.-H. Ho, and X. Shen, "An Efficient Identity-Based Batch Verification Scheme for Vehicular Sensor Networks," in IEEE INFOCOM 2008 - The 27th Conference on Computer Communications, Phoenix, AZ, USA, Apr. 2008, pp. 246–250.
A. S. Rajasekaran, A. Maria, F. Al-Turjman, C. Altrjman, and L. Mostarda, "ABRIS: Anonymous blockchain based revocable and integrity preservation scheme for vehicle to grid network," Energy Reports, vol. 8, pp. 9331–9343, Nov. 2022.
J. Zhang, H. Fang, H. Zhong, J. Cui, and D. He, "Blockchain-Assisted Privacy-Preserving Traffic Route Management Scheme for Fog-Based Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks," IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 2854–2868, Sep. 2023.
A. Maria, A. S. Rajasekaran, F. Al-Turjman, C. Altrjman, and L. Mostarda, "BAIV: An Efficient Blockchain-Based Anonymous Authentication and Integrity Preservation Scheme for Secure Communication in VANETs," Electronics, vol. 11, no. 3, Jan. 2022, Art. no. 488.
"miracl/MIRACL." MIRACL, Nov. 13, 2024, [Online]. Available: https://github.com/miracl/MIRACL.
M. Luo and Y. Zhou, "An Efficient Conditional Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocol Based on Generalized Ring Signcryption for VANETs," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 71, no. 9, pp. 10001–10015, Sep. 2022.
M. A. Shawky et al., "Blockchain-based secret key extraction for efficient and secure authentication in VANETs," Journal of Information Security and Applications, vol. 74, May 2023, Art. no. 103476.
A. K. Yadav, M. Shojafar, and A. Braeken, "iVFAS: An Improved Vehicle-to-Fog Authentication System for Secure and Efficient Fog-Based Road Condition Monitoring," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 73, no. 9, pp. 12570–12584, Sep. 2024.
Downloads
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Zahraa Sh. Alzaidi, Ali A. Yassin, Zaid Ameen Abduljabbar, Vincent Omollo Nyangaresi

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after its publication in ETASR with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.