Title: Cooperative downloading with privacy preservation and access control for value-added services in VANETs

Authors: Wujun Zhang; Shunrong Jiang; Xiaoyan Zhu; Yumin Wang

Addresses: National Key Laboratory of Integrated Networks Services, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China ' National Key Laboratory of Integrated Networks Services, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China ' National Key Laboratory of Integrated Networks Services, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China ' National Key Laboratory of Integrated Networks Services, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China

Abstract: Value-added services in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have gained increasing popularity in recent years. However, Road Side Units (RSUs) cannot usually cover the whole region, resulting in intermittent connectivity. Therefore, how to download data continuously while preserving users' privacy remains an open problem. In this paper, we propose an efficient data downloading scheme based on users' cooperation, providing continuous downloading services even when the region is not completely covered by RSUs. Moreover, in order to protect data receivers' privacy and realise fine-grained access control, we employ Ciphertext Policy Attribute Based Encryption with Constant Length (CP-ABE-CL) with consideration of users' charge levels. The security analysis shows that our scheme can achieve mutual authentication for vehicles and RSUs, and realise fine-grained access control while preserving privacy of data receivers' identities. The performance analysis demonstrates that our scheme is efficient enough to be implemented in VANETs.

Keywords: authentication; cooperative downloading; attribute based encryption; privacy preservation; privacy protection; VANETs; vehicular ad hoc networks; access control; value-added services; network security; cryptography; user cooperation; continuous downloading.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2016.073778

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2016 Vol.7 No.1, pp.50 - 60

Received: 16 May 2014
Accepted: 30 Aug 2014
Published online: 22 Dec 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article