Lightweight Identity Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles Based on Chameleon Hash Function

ABSTRACT The open nature of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) wireless channels necessitates robust identity authentication. However, existing schemes based on public key infrastructure (PKI) or identity‐based cryptography (IBC) often suffer from high computational and communication overheads, making them unsuitable for resource‐constrained vehicular environments. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol utilizing chameleon hash functions (CHF) and elastic bloom filters (EBF). Specifically, an optimized caching mechanism, the quick validation table (QVT), is integrated into the protocol to facilitate certificateless key agreement, ensuring anonymity without continuous third‐party dependence during cross‐domain handovers. By leveraging CHF's controllable collisions to replace complex cryptographic primitives and integrating EBF's probabilistic storage, the protocol significantly optimizes efficiency. Comparative analysis against state‐of‐the‐art lightweight schemes demonstrates reductions of 68.7% in authentication time, 52% in computational overhead, and 74.5% in communication load. Formal security verification under the real‐or‐random (ROR) model confirms the protocol's resistance to simulation, replay, and session key attacks, ensuring forward/backward secrecy.