A blockchain-based efficient, secure and anonymous conditional privacy-preserving and authentication scheme for the Internet of Vehicles

Abstract

The rapid advancement in the area of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has provided numerous\ncomforts to users due to its capability to support vehicles with wireless data communication. The\nexchange of information among vehicle nodes is critical due to the rapid and changing topologies,\nhigh mobility of nodes, and unpredictable network conditions. Finding a single trusted entity to\nstore and distribute messages among vehicle nodes is also a challenging task. IoV is exposed to\nvarious security and privacy threats such as hijacking and unauthorized location tracking of smart\nvehicles. Traceability is an increasingly important aspect of vehicular communication to detect and\npenalize malicious nodes. Moreover, achieving both privacy and traceability can also be a challenging\ntask. To address these challenges, this paper presents a blockchain-based efficient, secure, and\nanonymous conditional privacy-preserving and authentication mechanism for IoV networks. This\nsolution is based on blockchain to allow vehicle nodes with mechanisms to become anonymous and\ntake control of their data during the data communication and voting process. The proposed secure\nscheme provides conditional privacy to the users and the vehicles. To ensure anonymity, traceability,\nand unlinkability of data sharing among vehicles, we utilize Hyperledger Fabric to establish the\nblockchain. The proposed scheme fulfills the requirement to analyze different algorithms and\nschemes which are adopted for blockchain technology for a decentralized, secure, efficient, private,\nand traceable system. The proposed scheme examines and evaluates different consensus algorithms\nused in the blockchain and anonymization techniques to preserve privacy. This study also proposes\na reputation-based voting system for Hyperledger Fabric to ensure a secure and reliable leader\nselection process in its consensus algorithm. The proposed scheme is evaluated with the existing\nstate-of-the-art schemes and achieves better results.