Enhancing security and trust using efficient privacy-preserving authentication in vehicular edge computing networks

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) requires advanced safety, security, and services in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Frequent broadcast message intervals and Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) make validating messages in such short timeframes extremely challenging. Additionally, current authentication protocols cannot meet the demands of the environment due to high communication and computational overheads. Furthermore, lightweight authentication proposals have been put forth to solve the problem; however, such attempts cannot provide a sophisticated solution that can handle advanced security needs and suffer from accuracy issues. This article presents a two-factor authentication protocol using lightweight cryptographic operations such as one-way hashing and exclusive OR (XOR) with acceptable efficiency and security. The identities are generated using Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), passwords, and randomized nonces to ensure two-factor authentication. The proposal is rigorously verified through formal security analysis, confirming that the protocol is untraceable, anonymous, protects key secrecy, and is resistant to well-known attacks in the IoV domain. The performance analysis confirms its robustness and reliability, with 43.31% low energy consumption in terms of computation, communication, and support for more security requirements, making it a feasible solution for the IoV domain.