This fUll-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

A Hybrid Security Framework for the Vehicular

Communications in VANET
Thanmayee Karimireddy Ahmad Ghulam A Bakshi
Department of Computer Science and Technology School of Aerospace Transport and Manufacturing (SATM)
University of Bedfordshire, UK Cranfield University, UK
thanmayee.karimireddy@study.beds.ac.uk ahmad.baksh@cranfield.ac.uk

Abstract -Vehicular ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are

both MANET and VANET possess similar characteristics like
predominantly gaining higher attention in the recent times both node mobility, dynamic network topology, and wireless
in the academic and industrial field. The vehicular communications.
communications that intend to take place in the wireless
medium support several safety applications of the vehicle Even though, VANET plays a very crucial role in the ITS
passengers. The open communication environment of V ANET applications by offering various attractive features, without
enables the vehicle drivers to access the ubiquitous services proper security assurance communicating the information over
which have become one of the main reasons for the increase of VANET can be risky. This is because, vehicular
security vulnerabilities on vehicular communications. As a
communications in VANET deal with not only information
result, this paper emphasises the need of securing vehicular
about traffic and road conditions but also involved user specific
communications in VANET and proposes a hybrid security
framework. The novel approach of this framework lies in
information such as their route, trip path and time critical
combining RSA and AES algorithms to form hybrid information that is intended only for the control centres . Such
cryptography and this hybrid cryptography is used to secure the type of user specific information and time critical information
vehicular communications in VANET. The simulation results must be kept private, making security as one of crucial
have validated the performance and the security levels of this requirements for VANET applications [5].
hybrid cryptographic method when applied to VANET.
Vehicular ad-hoc networks must incorporate security
Keywords!. VANET, Security, Vehicular communication, hybrid policies to provide better security level to vehicular
cryptography, simulation. Network Simulator communications among the vehicle users [6]. For this purpose,
the VANET security architecture must be designed such that it
1. INTRODUCTION incorporates security policies and provides security to its users.
However, the MANET routing protocols applied for VANET
Vehicular ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a special type of do not consider security aspects into account due to ad-hoc
Mobile ad-hoc Network (MANET) that offers support to the network topology. This ad-hoc topology of VANET makes its
vehicular communications among the mobile vehicles. One existing routing protocols very difficult to incorporate security
of the predominant applications of the VANET is to offer mechanisms as dynamic network topology is prone to several
driver safety and also to communicate information in an security issues [7].
Intelligent Transport System (ITS) [1]. The vehicles in a
In this paper, a novel approach is used to secure the
VANET exchange different type of information through
vehicular communications in VANET. This novel approach is
either vehicle-to-vehicle communication, vehicle-to-road side
based on hybrid cryptography concept, which is a combination
equipment communication. This information exchanged in
of public key cryptographic method and private key
V ANETs can be about the traffic conditions, road conditions
cryptographic method. In this work, hybrid cryptographic
or other kind of transport information to the users connected
method is developed by combining RSA and AES (Advanced
to VANET. For example, if a vehicle is struck due to bad
Encryption Standard) cryptographic algorithms. Simulation
road conditions, it can immediately communicate its
models in NS2 simulator are used to show the effectiveness of
condition to other vehicles and warn them through vehicle-to­
hybrid cryptography in securing vehicular communications in
vehicle communications in VANET. The vehicle-to-road side
VANET.
equipment communications of VANET help in transmitting
the information about the road condition and the vehicle to
II. SECURITY ASPECT OF VANET PROTOCOLS
the control system and also can warn the other vehicles
The ad-hoc nature of VANETs made them to be applied for
intended to follow the same route [2]. Routing of this crucial a wide range of applications and at the same time has also
information in VANET requires routing protocols for which resulted in several issues related to security for wireless
the existing MANET routing protocols are used in most of communication. Researchers have reported several security
VANET applications [3] [4] as issues that rose against the data privacy, data confidentiality and

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 This fUll-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

data integrity of the data exchanged over VANETs [7] The incorporation of IEEE 802.1 Ii security engine in the
[8] [9] [10]. This lack of proper security policies has become MAC layer serves the purpose of ensuring security to the
one of the reasons to limit the applicability of VANET in wireless communication. In the network layer, security
different applications such as traffic jams detection. provision is done through the routing protocols. The commonly
Provision of security to vehicular communications over used network routing protocol for vehicular ad-hoc network is
VANET has become one of the serious issues due to the ad-hoc on Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol.
transmission of the information over open and wireless However, AODV don't implicitly offered security polices
medium. during information routing which makes security provision very
difficult when applying this routing protocol. Being a source
In highly time critical applications, it is very important to routing technique, AODV provides overhead in data
secure the information transmitted through a VANET so that transmission. Even though solutions [10] [14] are available to
it cannot be accessed by malicious users or attackers. On the overcome the routing overhead involved in AODV,
other hand resolving the current security issues of V ANET implementation of these techniques is very difficult and costly.
have become challenging because of huge network size,
random speed of vehicles and stable node position and due to III. NEED OF VANET SECURITY
the error prone wireless links connecting vehicles in the
VANET. A security system designed for VANET is intended Among the several reasons of offering security to V ANET
to identify attackers and the malicious users present in the privacy is considered as one of the most crucial ones. Consider
network and must also ensure in providing the required level a user taking long distance trip, in this trip he is required to
of privacy to the data exchanged over MANET [11]. In move from one access point to another one which are under the
general, attackers are divided into three main categories control of different service providers. Lack of proper security
policies result in various privacy issues when a user is moved
1. First category include active and passive attackers, from one access point to other rI5l Securing driver information
2. Secondary category includes malicious and rational about their identify path they are travelling, speed is one of the
attackers, crucial requirements of a vehicle driver. In the process of
3. Third category includes insider and outsider securing their information need to restrict unauthorized users in
attackers. accessing the data. Hence there is a great need of a security
framework that provides the intended level of security to
All these different kind of attackers can launch several VANET so that private data and time critical data can be
attacks in VANET such as Black hole attack, Denial of exchanged over the wireless channel.
Service (DoS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) very
easily in the network [7] [12]. IV. CRYPTOGRAPHIC ALGORITHMS

Cryptography is one of the commonly adopted solutions to

provide security for mobile ad-hoc network and vehicular ad­
hoc network. Cryptography is referred as art of hiding messages
through encryption algorithms. An encryption algorithm
converts plan text that is given as input into cipher text. The
decryption algorithm performs the opposite process of
encryption algorithm to change cipher text to plain text [16].

A summary of the cryptographic methods that can be

applied for security the vehicular communications in VANET is
given in Figure 2. One is public key cryptography, second is
private key cryptography and third is one way hash function.
Fig I: Security in MAC layer

Similar to other networks, security framework designed

for VANET is required to satisfy four security requirements
such as authentication, confidentiality, integration,
availability and non-repudiation. The security
implementation is VANET must consider all the seven Open
System Interconnection (OSI) layers, but majority of VANET
protocols like Ad-Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV)
consider three layers: Physical, Data link and network layer Fig 2: Classification of cryptographic methods
for security implementation in this VANET [13]. Figurel
presents the details of incorporating security policies into Symmetric key cryptography is one possible security
IEEE 802.11 Medium access control layer.

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 This fUll-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

method for VANET. The symmetric cryptography are private As given in figure 3, using this hybrid encryption method
key cryptography uses the same key for encrypting the data the private data will be initially encrypted using the RSA
to cipher text and decrypting it back to plain text. algorithm. The cipher text that is obtained from the RSA
Asymmetric key cryptography or public key cryptography is algorithm will be given as the input to the AES algorithms and
another possible security method that can be applied for then the encryption will take place to produce the cipher text.
VANET. This method uses two keys; private key and public
key [17]. Here private key is used for data encryption and
public key is used for data decryption. One way hash function
is one of security mechanism that uses pseudo numbers to
generate has value of the original message.

Even though using two keys in asymmetric key

cryptography enhances the security level, it faces the problem
of consuming high extent of network resources in terms of
memory and computations. In case of symmetric key
cryptography the network resources required are
comparatively less but offer less security when compared to
asymmetric key cryptography due to the use of same key for
encryption and decryption. These problems faced by the
existing security methods are resolved in this paper by
developing a security framework that combines symmetric
key cryptography and asymmetric key cryptography so that
the security of vehicular communications over VANET can
be enhanced [18].

V. PROPOSED SECURITY FRAMEWORK

In this section, the proposed security framework to secure

vehicular communications in vehicular ad-hoc network is
explained. This security framework is termed as hybrid key
cryptography method and is mainly aimed in securing
VANET in a unique manner through which the vehicular
communications are secured. The uniqueness of this security
framework lies in combining public key cryptography and the
private key cryptography to encrypt the data and decrypt it.
The main reason behind combining public key and private
key cryptography is to resolve the limitations faced by each
of these security methods heighted in section V.

Among all private key cryptographic methods, AES Fig 3: The security framework of hybrid cryptography
algorithm is used in this framework as it offers higher level of
security through strong mathematical foundation which As given in figure 3 the private data or secret data of the
makes the attacker very difficult to decrypt the encrypted user will be secured by double encrypting it using hybrid
information. Among the different asymmetric key algorithms, cryptography. In the encryption process initially RSA algorithm
RSA is chosen for this proposed framework for VANET. The is used to encrypt the secret data the output of the RSAS
reason being choosing RSA algorithm is less resource algorithm is given as input to AES algorithm. The output of
consumption and high security level. The wide applicability AES algorithm is the cipher text which is encrypted twice using
of RSA security algorithm in various real time applications hybrid cryptography. This cipher text will be transmitted over
has also resulted in the selection of this RSA algorithm for the wireless channel to the other vehicle user in VANET. The
hybrid cryptography. The security framework that is receiver of this encrypted data can understand the message
proposed for the vehicle ad-hoc networks is aimed at contents only by decrypting it using hybrid cryptography. The
providing higher level of security by consuming less number decryption process of this proposed framework is designed as
of resources. To satisfy this aim, the combination of RSA and the reverse process of encryption. That is, the received cipher
AES algorithms is chosen for the security framework of text is decrypted first by AES algorithm and the output of AES
hybrid cryptography given in Figure 3. algorithm will be given as input to RSA algorithm for further
decryption. The resultant output of RSA algorithm will be the

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 This fUll-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

original message sent by the sender over the wireless TABLE I : SIMULATION PARAMETERS
channel of VANET.
The hybrid cryptography offers comparatively high level Simulation Parameter Value
of security as it is difficult for the attacker to decrypt the
information that is encrypted by two cryptographic Number of nodes 64
algorithms. As the attacker must choose the exactly the same
algorithms RSA and AES for decryption process in order to Type of the nodes Mobile nodes
decrypt the data, guessing the algorithms takes time and is
also not practically possible. Implementation of this proposed Type of the packets Data packets and
security framework is cost effective as the algorithm chosen control packets
for hybrid cryptography requires less number of
Packet size 50 bytes
computational resources. On the other hand the chosen
algorithms RSA and AES increases security level of
Type of the traffic CBR traffic
application. By the application of security framework for
vehicular ad-hoc network, every message that is either
Traffic generator BRUTE
marked as private or secret will be secured using hybrid
cryptography. Network area 500 * 500 square meters

VI. NETWORK SIMULATION Simulation time 100 sec

In this section, the details of the network simulation The Simulated VANET possess 64 vehicles In the network
carried out to validate the security level and effectiveness of without any proper network topology. Three different mobility
the propose hybrid cryptographic method in securing the patterns of the vehicles are considered in designing VANET
vehicular communications between the vehicles. The design and shown in figure 4. The first mobility pattern assigns
of the vehicular ad-hoc network is done using the network random movement to each vehicle, second and the third
animator. The scenario of VANET is simulated in the form of mobility patterns offer unique speed and movement of the
ad-hoc network topology as given in Figure 4. vehicles in MANET.

VII. SIMULATION RESULTS

The results of the simulation are used to critically analyze

the performance of the hybrid cryptographic method and its
security level offered to the vehicular communications in
VANET. Based on the results of simulation, the performance of
hybrid cryptographic method formed by combining RSA and
AES algorithm is compared with AES algorithm as given in
Figure 5.

Fig 4: VANET topology simulation

The nodes of this simulated network scenario of VANET

represent vehicles that are mobile with specific mobility
pattern. The random movement of the nodes in this simulated
scenario results in an ad-hoc network topology that changes
dynamically based on the nodes' mobility pattern. The
simulation parameters used for the simulation of the hybrid Fig 5: Performance of hybrid cryptography
cryptographic method in VANET are highlighted in Table 1.

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 This fUll-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

Figure 5 shows that hybrid cryptography (AES +RSA)

method offers higher performance level when compared to
AES algorithm. From the graph is Figure 5, it is evident that
the Performance of VANET has increased at a continuous
level when hybrid cryptography is implemented. In case of
implementing AES algorithm to secure private messages over
VANET, performance increased to certain extent and then
decreased. Hence in terms of performance, the proposed
hybrid cryptography (RSA+AES) algorithm is better than
individual cryptographic algorithms.

The security offered by the proposed hybrid

cryptographic method is compared with the AES security
method and is given in figure 6.
Fig 6: Security level of hybrid cryptography in terms of
Figure 6 shows the graph indicating the success factor source factor
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