A Trust-Based Framework for Enhancing Security and Reliability in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs)

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are considered one of the key enablers for intelligent transportation systems and enable vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicles-infrastructure communications, that improve road safety; traffic management efficiency; and passenger comfort. Despite all their advantages, VANETs are strongly vulnerable to many security threats like data tampering, identity spoofing, and denial-of-service attacks that could threaten the dependability of such networks. In this paper, we present a trust-based framework to enhance the security and dependability in VANETs. The framework uses trust evaluation mechanisms to evaluate the authenticity of participating nodes and thus provably guarantees communication under adversaries. We proposed an approach that combines direct trust and indirect trust, where the former is based on past interactions among nodes while the latter are recommendations from neighboring within the network. In this way, we enhance security by using cryptographic techniques and a decentralized trust management system to eliminate single points of failure and build scalability. Simulation results show that the proposed trust framework can detect and isolate malicious nodes more efficiently and increase true positive rate at less cost of false positives while keeping the network reliable even in hostile conditions. This framework is not only secure but it also provides core communications needed for success in deploying of intelligent transportation systems, which has been overseen throughout real field-testing. This work helps in the ongoing quest of robust and secure environment for VANETs, making roads safer thereby more efficient.