Mix-Context-Based Pseudonym Changing Privacy Preserving Authentication in VANETs

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have attracted significant attention in academia insofar as they can provide reliable and secure communication between vehicles. It is thus essential to ensure security and preserve privacy. In this paper, we propose mix-context-based pseudonym changing privacy-preserving authentication (MPCPA). MPCPA introduces privacy protection through a mutual authentication mechanism to prevent attack-vehicles from sneaking into a VANET system. Moreover, it preserves the integrity of transmitted messages with an anonymous authentication mechanism. In addition, MPCPA adopts a mix-context-based pseudonym changing strategy to prevent vehicle tracking. A performance analysis demonstrates that MPCPA incurs low computational costs and offers a privacy-preserving scheme that is more secure than existing authentication schemes.