A Survey on Recent Advances in Vehicular Network Security, Trust, and Privacy

TLDR

Vehicular ad hoc networks promise comfort and safety but their unique characteristics make security, privacy, and trust management challenging, and anonymity alone cannot prevent tracking of drivers’ location profiles. This survey aims to fill gaps in existing literature by reporting the latest advances in VANET security, trust, and privacy while remaining self‑explanatory. The survey reviews anonymous authentication and location‑privacy schemes, analyzes trust‑management models, and updates on mobility and network simulators used in VANET research. It identifies gaps in prior surveys and presents the latest advances in VANET security, trust, and privacy.

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are becoming the most promising research topic in intelligent transportation systems, because they provide information to deliver comfort and safety to both drivers and passengers. However, unique characteristics of VANETs make security, privacy, and trust management challenging issues in VANETs' design. This survey article starts with the necessary background of VANETs, followed by a brief treatment of main security services, which have been well studied in other fields. We then focus on an in-depth review of anonymous authentication schemes implemented by five pseudonymity mechanisms. Because of the predictable dynamics of vehicles, anonymity is necessary but not sufficient to thwart tracking an attack that aims at the drivers' location profiles. Thus, several location privacy protection mechanisms based on pseudonymity are elaborated to further protect the vehicles' privacy and guarantee the quality of location-based services simultaneously. We also give a comprehensive analysis on various trust management models in VANETs. Finally, considering that current and near-future applications in VANETs are evaluated by simulation, we give a much-needed update on the latest mobility and network simulators as well as the integrated simulation platforms. In sum, this paper is carefully positioned to avoid overlap with existing surveys by filling the gaps and reporting the latest advances in VANETs while keeping it self-explained.