2013 Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Control and Information Processing (ICICIP)
June 9 11, 2013, Beijing, China
Analysis of VANET Security
Based on Routing Protocol Information
Lu Chen, Hongbo Tang, Junfei Wang
ABSTRACTVANET is new kind of Ad hoc. It is widely used
in ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems), which has many
characteristics as large scale network, fast moving nodes, the
frequently changing topological structure and easily divided
networks. Therefore, routing protocol design must fully
consider of this characteristics with much node information
that bring a great challenge to the security of VANET. In this
paper, we divide the information type into four categories based
on different content, and analyze the security threats in
different information type, then summarize the existing security
technologies and give the possible research directions.
.Introduction
T he Vehicle Ad hoc Network (VANET) is a new kind of
network, which developed from Mobility Ad hoc
Network. It is widely used in Intelligent Transportation
System (ITS) [1] that provide strong technical supports for
vehicles using the wireless channel to deliver traffic safety
informations, road status information large scale network,
fast moving nodes, the frequently changing topological
structure, node shift Dynamic regularity enhancement, and
easily divided networks [2]. Because of the characteristics
and demands to VANET network, some new routing
protocol arises at the historic moment. However, with the
development of technology application, some potential
safety problems appeared at the same time.
In this paper, we analyzed the features of the informations
carried by the existing routing protocols applied in VANET,
presented the possible security problems according to the
type of informations and provides the existing security
mechanisms. This organization is as follows: the next section
introduces the main architecture of VANET, the major
routing protocols and the classification of the information
carried by existing routing protocols. The third quarter
argues the possible security issues due to the classified
information. The fourth quarter states feasible VANET
security mechanism. Finally, the future work is summarized
and prospected.
. VANET Architecture and Major Routing Protocol
The Vehicle Ad hoc network [3] is defined as a fast
Supported by the Major State Basic Research Development Program of
China (973 Program) (No.2012CB315901) and the National High
Technology Research and Development Program of China (863
Program)(No.2011AA010604).
Lu Chen is with the National Digital Switching System Engineering
Technological R&D Center . China( e-mail: Gwendolyn0530@yahoo.cn) .
Hongbo Tang is with the National Digital Switching System Engineering
Technological R&D Center . China( e-mail: thb@ndsc.com.cn ) .
Junfei Wang is with the Information Engineering University .
China( e-mail: Wangjunfei628@yahoo.cn) .
978-1-4673-6249-8/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE
moving outdoor communication network, also known as
SOTIS (self-organizing traffic information system) [4]. In
VANET, the moving vehicles can constitute a network
communication by exchanging the speed and position
information for another. Each node in the network has the
ability to find the path, which adopted the multi-hop to
deliver the information sent out from the source node finally
to the destination node place through a series of forwarding.
The network communication is made up of two parts:
vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication and vehicle to
infrastructure (V2I) communication. As shown in figure 1,
vehicle global positioning services (GPS, global positioning
Figure 1 VANET Architecture
system) and digital multimedia services (DMB, digital
multimedia broad - casting) can provide by satellite
communication system. Different from the traditional Ad
hoc network, the VANET communication can be provided
with more nodes information with the aid of the whole
communication system. Detailed information not only
brought communication convenient but also the hidden
danger of the network safety at the same time. In this paper,
we discussed the classification of VANET routing protocols
on carried information and the security problems between
vehicle-to-vehicle communications.
Since VANET has many characteristics as large scale
network, fast moving nodes, the frequently changing
topological structure and easily divided networks, the
designing on routing protocol should adjust measures to
local conditions, grasp and reasonable use of these
characteristics [5]. The existing VANET routing protocol
can be roughly divided into three categories:
TBR, topology-based routing
PBR, position-based routing
Hybrid routing
Among them, the routing protocol based on topology
should be divided into pre-active routing protocols and
reactive routing protocols, as fig.2 described.
134

Figure 2 VANET Routing Protocol Classification
The designing on VANET routing protocol referenced the
Ad hoc working group on the traditional network DSDV and
AODV [6]and other network protocol, and made the
comprehensive use of position or velocity information and
put forward the GPSR[7], GPCR[8] and GeoDTN + Nav
[9]routing protocols.
Its very important to select and maintain routing, and
according to the choice of routing forwarding data for the
guarantee of normal communication in the dynamic network
topology. Due to the different routing protocol based on
different information, the way to select next hop in routing
protocol is endless also and same. According to the three
routing strategy, we can consider the information carried by
the following four kind of routing protocols can divided into
four categories: path information, distance information,
azimuth information and moving direction information
TABLE I
THE INFORMATION CARRIED BY ROUTING PROTOCOLS
Routing
PATH Distance Azimuth
Protocol
DSDV YES YES YES
AODV NO YES NO
GPCR NO YES YES
GeoDTN
YES YES YES
+Nav
From table 1, a certain routing protocol can carry more
than one kind of node information. Each kind of information
may bring various security risks. In next part, we will give a
statement of security issues may bring out by different types
of node information separately.
. Security Issues in Routing Protocol Information
Safety problem is one of the most important parts in
VANET network routing protocol research. The destruction
in the routing protocol layer could do make the whole
network collapse. Therefore, the designing on protocol
should be considered all kinds of possible attack in the
network. We divided the type of attack into two categories
[10]: active attack and passive attack. In active attack the
attacker participated in routing protocol actively, tempered
the content in transmission to prevent routing establishment
and changed the transfer direction or used of false
information to swindle network license, etc. In passive attack
the attacker was not directly involved in the implementation
process of routing protocol, but monitoring routing
information to get the useful information, and thus for the
malicious attacks. We analyze the security issues may bring
by active attack towards path information, distance
information, azimuth information and moving direction
information below.
APath Information
Path information records the node which can reach or the
information node have experienced. The routing protocols
which build routing table in the communication in advance
or record node ID during forwarding process way will carry
path information. Tempering the path information by
attacker may cause preventing routing establishment or
appearing routing loop eventually lead to packet
transmission failure.
When a node joining in the network, DSDV will trigger
information notice to tell the new node routing information
and in turn transfer to other node. If the malicious nodes
modified the updating information, this will lead the correct
routing to a new node not deliver to the rest node in the
network that could stop establish the new routing. Whilst,
the malicious nodes may modify the information notice in
which the next hop is itself, so as to cheat data information
in the network.
In GeoDTN + Nav, when normal forwarding mode
hindered, the protocol will turn to VCLCR mode. Because of
GPCR selecting the intersection nodes preferentially, it is
essential to avoid routing loops. In VCLCR [11] mode, if an
attacker changed the record in packet, the mistakes inpath
information will lead to emerging routing loops. As shown
in figure 3, when node A is suffered a modified path
information attack, the transmission from source node S to
the destination node D will form routing loops in A - D - C -
Moving B or A - B - F - E as a result of wrong path record
Direction
information, give rise to data transmission timeout and
NO
NO transmission failure.
NO
YES
Figure 3 Path Information Modified Lead to Routing Loop
BDistance Information
The distance between adjacent nodes and the destination
node is an important measure to select next hop in routing
protocol. The distance information was carried by most of
routing protocol in VANET. Therefore the changing to
distance information will bring the entire network
communication enormous damage.
In protocols, the recent node is usually choosing the
nearest neighbor one to destination one as forwarding node.
Malicious node makes the distance from itself to the
destination node less than the rest of the adjacent nodes by
modifying its distance information to the destination node.
135
The recent node will select the malicious nodes as the next
hop. Actually, the distance between malicious nodes and the
destination node is far outweighing the rest of the neighbor
node. Malicious nodes destroy the network communication
in two aspects: on one hand, the involvement of malicious
nodes influent the original communication process, that lead
to some of the network node inaccessible or some node link
in idle, the malicious nodes in routing process will increase
the unnecessary costs and make the transmission load
increase at the same time. On the other hand, malicious
nodes could do data content analysis, take data tempered or
even discarded in the cheated packed by modified distance
information, which cause packet transmission failure and
make the network data loss eventually damaging the
information security.
When the source node A sending data to destination
node D, we assumed the distance node B to the destination
node D for d1, the distance between malicious nodes C to the
destination node D for d2. Malicious node C argues that its
distance to destination is minimum of the neighbor node
within the scope of A communication, namely d2 < d1. At
this time, source node A will choose C as the next hop. In
this way, the malicious node C increased the network routing
overhead, and could cheat data information to malicious
attacks.
CAzimuth Information
The traditional mobile Ad hoc routing protocol was not
carrying adjacent nodes azimuth information, which adopted
spending large broadcast ways to establish and maintain
routing. Deficiency in information increase delay and cost
during route setup process. If there are azimuth information
instructions in FIG. 3, the possibility against modified
distance information can reduce greatly.
VANET GPCR and GeoDTN+Nav are both to carrying
the node azimuth information. They have brought
convenient for the practical application in urban
Figure 4 Distance Information Modified Lead to Costs Increased
environment, but also brought new safety problems. Once
the destination node azimuth was made direction mistaken, it
will get the network communications disastrous failure. In
GPCR, the node transmits the data accordance with the
greedy forwarding mode. When this mode is suffocated, it
will transmit data according to the right hand side which
takes edge forwarding mode. In the decision process of the
right hand side of the method, it requires that between
current node and the previous node and the connections
between source node and destination node can not have cross
[12]. If the azimuth information happens to change, the
judgment for next hop in the process of forward edge will be
136
disorder. It increases the network unnecessary costs and
affects the data transfer process. As in figure 5(a), normally,
when the source node S send information to the destination
node D, it will be forwarding in accordance with the law of
the right hand in S - A - B - C - D node order. When the
malicious nodes E and C tempers the azimuth information as
figure 5(b) E 'and' C respectively, the forwarding path will
become S - A - E - B - F - C - D. This not only increases the
number of routing and transport costs, but also increases the
transmission delay and packet loss. It offers a convenient
manipulation for malicious nodes to diddle data information
and make analyze data content.
DMoving Direction Information
VANET network is different from traditional mobile Ad
hoc network. It has the characteristics as high node
movement speed, the unevenly network node distribution
and a certain regularity node mobility. It puts forward new
difficulties for the establishment of the routing, but also
provides new solutions.
The particularity of network application environment
determines the difficulties in building routing. In the
intelligent transportation system, due to the few vehicles in
night or fast vehicle speed may result in network
(a) The Edge of the Right Hand Rule Forwarding
(b) Azimuth Information Modified Path Forwarding
Figure 5 Azimuth information modified Lead to Costs Increase
segmentation. In this case, source node couldn't find the
right forwarding node which can lead to transmission failure.
The GeoDTN+Nav uses the regularity of VANET node
mobility, which according to the position of the node and
movement direction information to select the forwarding
nodes to overcome network segmentation problem. The
moving direction information is the direction to which the
neighbor node is moving, it is different from the azimuth
information. The changing of the direction in moving
direction information may make packet transfer occurred at
cross purposes phenomenon, which make the transmission
direction and the destination node apart from each other
more and more far, and can not to overcome network
segmentation problem very well. In addition, in the special
environment of VANET, the correctness of the direction of
moving information has great significance for the driver and
passenger's safety. If the malicious node changes the vehicle
moving direction from turning right to going straight, the
rear of the vehicle need to turn right would consider that the
road ahead is unimpeded and relaxes driving vigilance. Until
to find the vehicle ahead turning right, it will probably too
late to take measures and cause traffic accidents. Particularly,
owing to the direction of the mobile node influence by the
artificial factor, the network node movement direction may
change in a short time. Hence the success of the network
communications depends on the tolerable delay constraints
and the correct data transmission. In the information security
mechanism, it comes up higher request with the speed in
data encryption/decryption.
Therefore, protection the integrity and accuracy of the
information in routing protocol takes the significance for
correct data transmission and network safety. We must take
effective way to prevent malicious nodes attack.
. VANET Security Mechanism
The integrity, reliability and confidentiality of network
information is of great significance for network security. In
VANET, the nodes will exchange a lot of network topology
information between each other, whilst information
disclosure, manipulation, insert or recording replay will give
normal communication with all kinds of safety problem. It
need a series of security mechanism to protect the integrity
and consistency of network information to ensure the normal
operation of the network. From the present study, the main
research direction includes data encryption, security
authentication and intrusion detection.
AData Encryption
The most commonly and simply way used to protect data
information is data encryption. In IEEE P1609.2 provides
the application relevant VANET network and management
of the security mechanism, from which proposed the elliptic
curve encryption algorithm [13] which using the length of
256 bits. The proposed algorithm has a better effect than the
RSA encryption algorithm, and is considered to be the
general next generation public key cryptosystem. But the
speed of this encryption algorithm signature authentication
and encryption is low, and it will bring the influence of time
delay in the large scale network applications.
BSecurity Authentication
Security authentication mechanism is used to prevent and
detect a series of sabotage during accessing network by
malicious nodes [14]. Digital signature technology is good
for security authentication service. But it may reveal the
identity of the node, such as privacy information and
position information at the same time. In order to solve the
problem, the researchers proposed anonymous signature
authentication scheme based on group and anonymous
signature authentication scheme based on alias for VANET
network. But there are some shortcomings in the
authentication cost, communication cost and certificate
revocation. Only the identity revocation announcements
137
broadcasted in large VANET is enough to cause major
delays, which lead that part of the vehicle is unable to obtain
the correct information.
CIntrusion Detection
One of the most important remedy in network security
protection is intrusion detection [15], which analyzes the
collected related information in network to check whether
the network exists the network threat security or the signs of
attack, thus provide protection for the network information
security. In cable network, intrusion detection depends on
the flow analysis on the switches and routers gateway nodes.
But VANET is a no center and in organization network,
which can't provide monitory point for monitoring network
data flow. Meanwhile, due to the network characteristics as
strong mobility and node uneven distribution, it is difficult to
division network normal or proposed a abnormal threshold.
Therefore it brings new challenges for the application of
intrusion detection technology.
. Conclusion
With the rapid development of automobile industry,
intelligent transportation system will get more widely used.
Because VANET has many characteristics as large scale
network, fast moving nodes, the frequently changing
topological structure and easily divided networks, its routing
protocol design must fully consider of this characteristics
with much node information. This article from point of view
on the different information carried by protocols, analyzed
the network security problems brought by attacked and
modified the all kinds of information. Then, we provide
some security mechanism deal with VANET and questions
to be resolve in the future. Through the research we can see,
the current routing protocol mostly judge the next hop based
on just a certain few information, lacking of integrated
information treatment to select routing. Therefore, we should
consider from the integrated point of view the problem of
network security and routing protocol design. Wish
intelligent transportation system a better future for the
public.
REFERENCE
[1] Machida, Mamoru. "Intelligent transport (IT) system using wireless
communication between a roadside device and an in-vehicle device."
U.S. Patent No. 8,179,280. 15 May 2012.
[2] Blum J, Eskandarian A, Hoffmman L. "Challenges of inter vehicle ad
hoc networks,". IEEE Trans on Intelligent Transportation Systems,
2004, 5(4): 347 - 351.
[3] CHRISTIAN C, MORETTI L, TIAN J."Communication architecture
of CarTalk2000". The 10th World Congress and Exhibition on
Intelligent Transport Systems and Services [C]. Madrid, Spain, 2003.
[4] CHANG Cu-yu, XIANG Yong, SHI Mei-lin. "The Present Situation
and Development of VANET."Journal on
Communications,2007,28(11):116-126
[5] Krishnaveni, V. "Survey of Routing Protocols in Vehicular Ad-Hoc
Network."IJECCE 1.2 (2012): 110-114.
[6] Lal A, Sipi Dubey M, Pesswani B. "Reliability of MANET through
the Performance Evaluation of AODV, DSDV, DSR, " International
Journal, 2012, 2(5).
[7] Meng C U I, Dong L I. "A Speed-based Routing Protocol
Improvement on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks in City Scenarios, ".
Intelligent Computer and Applications, 2012, 3: 004.
[8] Mohammadzadeh H, Bigdello S J. "UTCARP: Urban Traffic Control
Aware Routing Protocol, ". International Journal, 2013.
[9] Paul B, Ibrahim M, Bikas M, et al. "VANET Routing Protocols: Pros
and Cons, " arXiv preprint arXiv:1204.1201, 2012.
[10] LIU Zheng, XIANG Yong, SUN Wei-Zhen. "The contrast analysis on
VANET unicast routing protocols, " Computer Engineering and
Design, 2011, Vol.32, No.11
[11] Lee K C, Cheng P-C, Weng J-T, et al. " VCLCR: a practical
geographic routing protocol in urban scenarios, " Los Angeles, CA:
UCLA, Boelter Hall, 2008.
[12] KevinC. Lee, Pei-Chun Cheng, Jui-Ting Weng, Lung-CHih Tung,
Mario Gerla. VCLCR: AP ractical Geogrophic Routing Protocol in
Urban Scenarios, UCLACSDT Technical Report: TR080009, March
26, 2008
[13] Enge, Andreas. "Elliptic curve cryptographic systems." Handbook of
Finite Fields (2013).
[14] Li C, Wang Z.Location-based Security Authentication Mechanism for
Ad hoc Network[J]. parameters, 2012, 1: 2.
[15] Hoh B, Gruteser M, Herring R, et al. Virtual trip lines for distributed
privacy-preserving traffic monitoring [C]. In MobiSys 08: Proceeding
of the 6th international conference on Mobile systems, applications,
and services. New York, NY,USA, 2008: 1528.

138