An Improved Blockchain-Based Lightweight Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Handover Authentication Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

We conduct a cryptanalysis of the Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) handover authentication protocol newly developed by Son et al., which incorporates blockchain technology for authentication purposes. Although this approach is notably efficient, our analysis reveals that the protocol is vulnerable to vehicle impersonation attacks, traceability attacks, and trusted authority (TA) circumvention attacks. To address these security vulnerabilities, we propose an enhanced protocol integrating Schnorr signature-based authentication, dynamically refreshed temporary identities, and TA-anchored credential mechanisms. We validate its security through heuristic analysis and formal verification using ProVerif. Furthermore, a comprehensive comparison with various related schemes confirms that the new protocol achieves a higher level of security while simultaneously maintaining satisfactory efficiency in both the computational and communication aspects.