SAFE-Connect Secure Authentication and Fog Services in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks for IoV

Abstract

In upcoming iterations of the internet of vehicles (IoVs), seamless communication will be facilitated among individuals, vehicles, roadside units (RSUs), and communication platforms. The overarching objectives include enhancing transit efficiency, ensuring comfort, improving road safety, and concurrently fostering environmental conservation. This research introduces a secure fog service for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), enabling diverse traffic data services such as road alerts, congestion control, and autonomous driving. The authors propose a novel authentication approach for fog services. Leveraging physical unclonable function (PUF) and blockchain, this approach facilitates authentication between vehicles and road-side units (RSU), circumventing potential fraudulent fog nodes. A comprehensive security analysis demonstrates its resilience against known attacks. Comparative evaluation against existing approaches underscores our protocol's superior balance of security and overhead, making it well-suited for secure vehicle fog environments.