Probabilistic validation of aggregated data in vehicular ad-hoc networks

Abstract

Vehicular ad-hoc networks present great opportunity for information exchange and equal opportunity for abuse. Validating traffic information without imposing significant communication overheads is a hard problem. In this paper, we propose a solution for validating aggregated data. The main idea is to use random checks to probabilistically catch the attacker, and thereby discourage attacks in the network. Our solution relies on PKI based authentication and assumes a tamper-proof service in each car to carry out certain secure operations such as signing and timestamping. We try to keep the set of secure operations as small as possible, in accordance with the principle of economy of mechanism. We show that our solution provides security without significant communication overheads.