Authentication and privacy preserving message transfer scheme for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs)

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are likely to be deployed for real-time applications in the coming years, thus, forming the most relevant form of mobile ad hoc networks. In such hostile environment, security is a major concern. The paper presents a novel architecture for VANETs to achieve authentication and privacy preserving message transfer among the vehicles. We have designed a four-phase protocol which employs Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Also, the paper discusses the performance of ECC over RSA in terms of key size and computation from the existing data set. Furthermore, the paper presents a static analysis to prove robustness and efficiency of the proposed approach.