Privacy Issues in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks: A Review

Abstract

Vehicle Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a type of wireless network that enables communication between vehicles and Road Side Units (RSUs) to improve road safety, traffic efficiency, and service delivery. However, the widespread use of vehicular networks raises serious concerns about users’ privacy and security. Privacy in VANET refers to the protection of personal information and data exchanged between vehicles, RSUs, and other entities. Privacy issues in VANET include unauthorized access to location and speed information, driver and passenger identification, and vehicle tracking. To ensure privacy in VANET, various technologies such as pseudonymization, message authentication, and encryption are employed. When vehicles frequently change their identity to avoid tracking, message authentication ensures messages are received from trusted sources, and encryption is used to prevent unauthorized access to messages. Therefore, researchers have presented various schemes to improve and enhance the privacy efficiency of vehicle networks. This survey article provides an overview of privacy issues as well as an in-depth review of the current state-of-the-art pseudonym-changing tactics and methodologies proposed.