Combating sybil attacks in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are considered as a promising approach for facilitating road safety, traffic management, and infotainment dissemination for drivers and passengers. However, they are subject to an attack that has a severe impact on their security. This attack is called the Sybil attack, and it is considered as one of the most serious attacks to VANETs, and a threat to lives of drivers and passengers. In this paper, we propose a detection scheme for the Sybil attack. The idea is based on public key cryptography and aims to ensure privacy preservation, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. In addition, we suggest a scalable security and privacy solution using short-lived and authenticated certificates that must be issued from the national certification authority in order to guarantee trust among vehicles. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.