On the use of security analytics for attack detection in vehicular ad hoc networks

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a special kind of mobile ad hoc network built on top of the IEEE802.11p standard for a better adaptability to the wireless mobile environment. As it is used for both supporting vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, and connecting vehicles to external resources including cloud services, Internet, and user devices while improving the road traffic conditions, VANET is a Key component of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). As such, VANET can be exposed to cyber attacks related to the wireless environment, and those of traditional information technologies systems it is connected to. However, when looking at solutions that have been proposed to address VANET security issues, it emerges that guaranteeing security in VANET essentially amounts to resorting to cryptographic-centric mechanisms. Although the use of public key Infrastructure (PKI) fulfills most VANET’ security requirements related to physical properties of the wireless transmissions, simply relying on cryptography does not secure a network. This is the case for vulnerabilities at layers above the MAC layer. Because of their capability to bypass security policy control, they can still expose VANET, and thus, the ITS to cyber attacks. Thereby, one needs security solutions that go beyond cryptographic mechanisms in order cover multiple threat vectors faced by VANET. In this paper focusing on attack detection, we show how using an implementation combining observation of events and incidents from multiple sources at different layers Sybil nodes can be detected regardless of the VANET architecture.