SPPVSC:
    Secure and Privacy-Preserving Vehicle Safety Communication Framework


    Securing vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside communication is an indispensable prerequisite for its deployment and real world use.  The system must ensure that the transmission comes from a trusted source and has not been tampered with since transmission.  For example, with the Traffic Signal Violation Warning application, the in-vehicle system will use information communicated from the infrastructure located at traffic signals to determine if a warning should be given to the driver. An incorrect transmission from a malfunctioning, invalid or compromised unit might jeopardize the safety of the vehicle and endanger others in the vicinity. 

    Privacy and anonymity are major issues that will also need to be addressed.  Vehicle safety communication applications broadcast messages about a vehicle’s current location, speed and heading.  There is a strong desire to provide user privacy so that the full identity of the car sending each message is kept private.  People who are concerned about tracking might disable their radio, impacting the safety and other benefits.  The system also needs to reassure people that Big Brother isn’t in the passenger’s seat.

    Objectives

    The goal is to develop a trustworthy vehicular communication framework.  Our key weapons are an emerging cryptographic technique, group signatures, and tamper-resistant devices (chips).   

    We view vehicular networks as a large scale distributed system.  All accesses to the system should be authorized.  The controlled access is enforced by a trusted tamper-resistant device in the vehicle.  Furthermore, to achieve accountable privacy, all messages sent should be signed and all messages received should be verified based on the group signature technique.  The framework will assure the following properties in vehicular networks:

    • Authenticity: the system assures that the packet/data are generated by a trusted source.
    • Integrity: the system assures that the data has not been tampered with or altered after it was generated.
    • Anonymity: the full identity of a vehicle sending each packet/data is kept private.
    • Accountability: the system can attribute actions to the entity that caused those actions, in case of conflict.
    • Real-time constraints: the security solution still allows low latency communication.

    Publications

    • J. Guo, J.P. Baugh, and S. Wang, “A Group Signature Based Secure and Privacy-Preserving Vehicular Communication Framework,” Proceedings of the Mobile Networking for Vehicular Environments (MOVE) workshop in conjunction with IEEE INFOCOM, Anchorage, Alaska, May 2007. [pdf]
    • J. Guo and J.P. Baugh, “Security and Privacy in Vehicle Safety Communication Applications,” SAE 2006 Transactions Journal of Passenger Cars: Electronic and Electrical Systems, Volume 115, Number 7 (2006), pp. 721-727.  (also appeared in 2006 SAE World Congress Session on Vehicle Information and Communication Security).
    • J. Guo and N. Balon, “Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks and Dedicated Short-Range communication,” Handbook on Mobile Ad Hoc and Pervasive Communications, L. T. Yang and M. Denko (Eds), American Scientific Publishers. To Appear.


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