Toward a honeypot solution for proactive security in vehicular ad hoc networks

Abstract

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is an application of the general concept of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) in the transportation domain. Playing a key-role in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), VANETs are vulnerable to threats that may jeopardize the in-vehicle security, thus subsequently causing accidents. Moreover, on looking at the connected car paradigm that enables interaction between both in-vehicle services as well as devices, and services with outside ones, VANETs will have to inherit security risks of conventional information technologies (IT) systems. This makes it necessary to resort to approaches providing supports and services that are capable to tackle the resulting wide range of security risks. Many works have been dedicated to VANETs security. Mostly the focus has been on data security, relying on cryptographic centric tools in order to ensure privacy, anonymity, and data security. Contrary to this, we propose an approach that aims to proactively address issues beyond data security that could hinder VANETs to become a reality if not properly faced. Although inspired by honeypots used in wired networks, it differs because of the need for tools and methods that should be sufficiently efficient and flexible to ensure context-awareness of security measures. © 2014 Springer-Verlag.