Privacy-aware route tracing and revocation games in VANET-based clouds

The foreseen dream of reliable, safe, and comfortable driving experience is yet to become reality since automobile industries are testing their waters for VANET (Vehicular Ad Hoc NETwork) deployment. But nevertheless, security and privacy issues have been the root cause of hindrance in VANET deployment. Recently, VANET evolved to VANET-based clouds as a result of resources-rich high-end cars. Soon after, Hussain et al. defined different architectural frameworks for VANET-based clouds. In this paper, we aim at a specific framework namely VuC (VANET using Clouds) where VANET and CC (Cloud Computing) cooperate with each other in order to provide VANET users (more precisely subscribers) with services. We propose a lightweight privacy-aware revocation and route tracing mechanism for VuC. Beacons broadcasted by vehicles are stored in cloud infrastructure as cooperation from VANET and after processing, cloud provides VANET subscribers with services. Revocation authorities can revoke and trace the path taken by the target node for a specified timespan by exploiting the beacons stored in the cloud. Our proposed scheme is secure, preserves conditional privacy, and is computationally less expensive than the previously proposed schemes.