An Efficient Pairing-Free Certificateless Signcryption Scheme Under the Standard Model for VANET

With the rapid advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT), its applications are becoming increasingly essential in actual application. Specifically, the recent surge in electric vehicles has spurred significant advancements in vehicle ad hoc networks (VANET). Therefore, efficient data transmission is a critical challenge in IoT, especially VANET. The certificateless signcryption (CLS) scheme has high authentication efficiency, which has become increasingly important in IoT. However, most existing schemes rely on bilinear pairing, resulting in high calculation costs or failure to achieve their claimed security. Furthermore, the security of some CLS schemes is proved in the random oracle, which limits the usefulness of the CLS scheme. To further address these issues, we propose an efficient and secure CLS scheme in the standard model for VANET, which enhances its practical applicability in VANET. Our construction employs formal security proofs and cost simulations to ensure the scheme’s security and low calculation costs, making it suitable for VANET. Finally, the security and efficiency analyses prove that our scheme offers enhanced security features and superior performance compared to existing schemes.