Secure vehicular communication systems: design and architecture

TLDR

Vehicular communication systems have progressed rapidly, yet security and privacy are essential to safeguard their safety and efficiency benefits, because weak protection can expose them to even unsophisticated attacks. The study seeks to develop a comprehensive, practical security architecture for vehicular communication systems within the SeVeCom project. The authors analyze threats, define security and privacy requirements, and propose a spectrum of mechanisms that constitute the SeVeCom architecture. Two papers report a deployable architecture, progress toward implementation, performance results, and future research challenges.

Abstract

Significant developments have taken place over the past few years in the area of vehicular communication (VC) systems. Now, it is well understood in the community that security and protection of private user information are a prerequisite for the deployment of the technology. This is so, precisely because the benefits of VC systems, with the mission to enhance transportation safety and efficiency, are at stake. Without the integration of strong and practical security and privacy enhancing mechanisms, VC systems could be disrupted or disabled, even by relatively unsophisticated attackers. We address this problem within the SeVeCom project, having developed a security architecture that provides a comprehensive and practical solution. We present our results in a set of two papers in this issue. In this first one, we analyze threats and types of adversaries, we identify security and privacy requirements, and we present a spectrum of mechanisms to secure VC systems. We provide a solution that can be quickly adopted and deployed. In the second paper, we present our progress towards the implementation of our architecture and results on the performance of the secure VC system, along with a discussion of upcoming research challenges and our related current results.