Security-Enhanced Data Sharing via Efficient Sanitization for VANETs

With the widespread deployment of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), data sharing has garnered considerable attention as a core feature of VANETs. Attribute-based proxy re-encryption (ABPRE) enables fine-grained access control and provides flexible ciphertext updates. The initially authorized vehicle generates the re-encryption key to enable ciphertext-to-ciphertext conversion in the cloud, allowing ciphertext to be shared with new recipients. However, initially authorized vehicles may not always be trustworthy and could share data with malicious receivers. In addition, the computation and communication overhead of ABPRE hinders its widespread application in VANETs. To address these issues, we propose a lightweight sanitizable scheme for edge-assisted VANETs based on ABPRE. In this scheme, the re-encryption key is verified by a sanitizer, to prevent the data from being shared with malicious data receivers. In addition, key-splitting techniques and edge computing are employed to reduce the communication and computation overhead of re-encryption. A comprehensive security analysis and performance evaluation demonstrate that the proposed scheme is efficient and practical.