Efficient communication scheme with confidentiality and privacy for vehicular networks

Privacy and security issues should be paid more attention before vehicular networks are deployed and applied in practice. This paper introduces an efficient privacy-preserving protocol with confidentiality for Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) based on group sign-cryption. The proposed protocol featured with the following characteristics: Firstly, it offers conditional anonymous authentication: a message issuer can authenticate itself anonymously on behalf of a group of potential signers while only a trusted authority can reveal the true identity of a message sender. Secondly, it provides confidential: the secrecy of the communication content can be protected. Thirdly, it is efficient: it achieves low storage requirements, fast message verification and cost-effective identity tracking in case of a dispute. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.