A Decentralized Reputation Management System for Securing the Internet of Vehicles

Abstract

The evolution of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) paradigm has recently attracted a lot of researchers and industries. Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) is the networking model that lies at the heart of this technology. It enables the vehicles to exchange relevant information concerning road conditions and safety. However, ensuring communication security has been and still is one of the main challenges to vehicles’ interconnection. To secure the interconnected vehicular system, many cryptography techniques, communication protocols, and certification and reputation-based security approaches were proposed. Nonetheless, some limitations are still present, preventing the practical implementation of such approaches. In this paper, we first define a set of locally-perceived behavioral reputation parameters that enable a distributed evaluation of vehicles’ reputation. Then, we integrate these parameters into the design of a reputation management system to exclude malicious or faulty vehicles from the IoV network. Our system can help in the prevention of several attacks on the VANET environment such as Sybil and Denial of Service attacks, and can be implemented in a fully decentralized fashion.