Anonymity Assurance Using Efficient Pseudonym Consumption in Internet of Vehicles

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 23; no. 11; p. 5217
• Main Authors: Mushtaq, Mehreen, Ullah, Ata, Ashraf, Humaira, Jhanjhi, N Z, Masud, Mehedi, Alqhatani, Abdulmajeed, Alnfiai, Mrim M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 31.05.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: adversary; BSM; Communication; Internet of Vehicles; IoVs; Network topologies; Privacy; pseudonym consumption; traceability; Traffic; vehicle anonymization; Vehicles; IoVs; vehicle anonymization; traceability; BSM; adversary; pseudonym consumption
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s23115217

The Internet of vehicles (IoVs) is an innovative paradigm which ensures a safe journey by communicating with other vehicles. It involves a basic safety message (BSM) that contains sensitive information in a plain text that can be subverted by an adversary. To reduce such attacks, a pool of pseudonyms is allotted which are changed regularly in different zones or contexts. In base schemes, the BSM is sent to neighbors just by considering their speed. However, this parameter is not enough because network topology is very dynamic and vehicles can change their route at any time. This problem increases pseudonym consumption which ultimately increases communication overhead, increases traceability and has high BSM loss. This paper presents an efficient pseudonym consumption protocol (EPCP) which considers the vehicles in the same direction, and similar estimated location. The BSM is shared only to these relevant vehicles. The performance of the purposed scheme in contrast to base schemes is validated via extensive simulations. The results prove that the proposed EPCP technique outperformed compared to its counterparts in terms of pseudonym consumption, BSM loss rate and achieved traceability.