A Lightweight Mutual Authentication Scheme for VANETs Between Vehicles and RSUs

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have emerged as part of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), offering the potential to enhance passenger and driver safety, as well as driving conditions. However, VANETs face significant security challenges and various attacks due to their wireless nature and operation in free space. Mutual authentication between vehicles and RSUs is one of the most, if not the most, critical security requirements in VANETs. In this process, maintaining resource authenticity, data authenticity and preserving users’ privacy, are key concerns.This paper proposes a pseudonym-based authentication scheme for VANETs, built upon existing approaches. The proposed scheme not only ensures the aforementioned security requirements but also meets critical security requirements for the mentioned process in VANETs, such as non-reputation, unlinkability, and unforgeability. Furthermore, the suggested scheme effectively detects and mitigates the Sybil attack in mutual authentication between vehicles and RSU, a well-known and common threat. By comparing the efficiency and security characteristics of the proposed scheme with other existing approaches, it becomes evident that the suggested scheme surpasses previously proposed methods.