BBAAS: Blockchain-Based Anonymous Authentication Scheme for Providing Secure Communication in VANETs

Abstract

Smart driving has become conceivable due to the rapid growth of vehicular ad hoc networks. VANETs are considered as the main platform for providing safety road information and instant vehicle communication. Nevertheless, due to the open wireless nature of communication channels, VANET is susceptible to security attacks by malicious users. For this reason, secure anonymous authentication schemes are essential in VANETs. However, when vehicles reach a new roadside unit (RSU) coverage area, the vehicles need to perform reauthentication with the current RSU, which significantly diminishes the efficiency of the entire VANET. Therefore, the introduction of blockchain technology has created opportunities for VANETs to resolve the aforementioned challenges. Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain technology, rapid reauthentication of vehicles is achieved in this paper through secure authentication code transfer between the consecutive RSUs. The security strength of the proposed blockchain-based anonymous authentication scheme against various harmful security attacks is proven in the security analysis section to ensure that it provides better security. In addition, blockchain, as presented in the performance analysis section, is used to substantially diminish the computational cost compared to conventional authentication schemes.