Title: CLPS: context-based location privacy scheme for VANETs

Authors: Ines Khacheba; Mohamed B. Yagoubi; Nasreddine Lagraa; Abderrahmane Lakas

Addresses: Laboratory of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Laghouat, BP 37G, Ghardaïa Road, Laghouat, Algeria ' Laboratory of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Laghouat, BP 37G, Ghardaïa Road, Laghouat, Algeria ' Laboratory of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Laghouat, BP 37G, Ghardaïa Road, Laghouat, Algeria ' College of Information Technology United Arab Emirates University PO Box 17551, Al Ain, UAE

Abstract: Location privacy preservation is considered as a challenge for deploying vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In fact, the continuous periodical broadcast of spatiotemporal information in beacons allows a global passive adversary (GPA) to link pseudonyms and reconstruct vehicle traces. Consequently, it is imperative that a vehicle selects the right context to change pseudonym to confuse the adversary and ensure pseudonyms unlinkability. In this paper, we propose a context-based location privacy scheme (CLPS) that makes the following contributions: i) a pseudonym changing strategy that allows a vehicle to change pseudonyms based on its context; ii) a linkability threat, called cheating attack that negatively affects the proposed pseudonym changing strategy. A cheating detection mechanism is developed to allow a vehicle to detect misbehaving vehicles that launch the cheating attack, and assess the success of the pseudonym change. Finally, we evaluate CLPS against GPA by simulations using privacy extension, PREXT, in Veins, and we compare it against different existing privacy schemes.

Keywords: VANET; security; location privacy; changing pseudonyms; linkability; cooperation; cheating detection.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2018.094404

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2018 Vol.29 No.1/2, pp.141 - 159

Received: 14 Sep 2017
Accepted: 20 Feb 2018
Published online: 31 Aug 2018 *

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