Safety and privacy in vehicular communications

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) will improve traffic safety and efficiency provided that car-to-car communication stays trustworthy. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that the information conveyed by vehicle-generated messages is reliable. A sensible option is to request that the content of a message originated by a certain vehicle be endorsed by nearby peer vehicles. However, neither message generation nor message endorsement should entail any privacy loss on the part of vehicles co-operating in it. This chapter surveys the available solutions to this security-privacy tension and analyzes their limitations. A new privacy-preserving system is sketched which guarantees message authentication through both a priori and a posteriori countermeasures. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.