VANET Security Research Group (VSRG)

Dr I.A.Sumra
 Introduction

 Vehicular ad-hoc network is a special kind of network in which

nodes (Vehicles) can communicate with each other on the road
and with its Infrastructure.

Road Side Unit (RSU) V2I

V2V V2V

Basic VANET Architecture

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 Safety Applications
Work Zone Work Zone
Warning:!!! Warning:!!!

Work
in Progress
Plz! use Alt.
route

 Non Safety Applications

Shopping MALL
( TESCO )

Parking Slot
RSU Parking Slot
Available!!! Available!!!

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 Vehicular network applications require security and the objective of these applications is to
serve users and make their journey secure and comfortable.
 Attackers have their own role in this network and we cannot predict the dynamic behavior of the
attacker. If an attacker works on a safety application and changes the content of the safety
message then it poses a very difficult condition on the road and many users will be affected due
to this kind of attack.
 Accidents are often the result of an alteration of any safety message or the sending of even one
wrong safety message in a network and many human lives are at risk [1].
 Network Behavior
 Attacker Behavior
• Availability is one of the hot research topics in vehicular communication. The
purpose of a vehicular network is to serve the users. But if the network is not
available for communication then the main goal of the network has become
useless.
• If an accident happens in location X and the user sends this information to
another vehicle but the channel is not available due to a DoS attack, this makes
availability of network a significant factor.
 In VANET, DOS shall not be allowed to happen, where
seamless life critical information must reach its
intended destination securely and timely. In summary,
there are three ways the attackers may achieve DOS
attacks.
 There are three levels of DOS attacks as described
below.
1. Basic Level: Overwhelm the Node Resources
2. Extended Level: Jamming the Channel
 Drop Communication
Packets:
 It is also called network DoS
attack, selfish node or
malicious node drop
communication packets in
network. This is also one of
the aspects related to
behavior of an attacker in
which an attacker just
drops the packets; the
purpose of this is to ensure
that users do not perform
any type of communication
in the network.
• In this case, an attacker tampers with the broadcast safety message and
possibly injects false safety message. The purpose of this is to cause
road accidents or change the flow of traffic on some specific route.
 A vehicle has its own software and application unit (AU) which
performs its own task and communicates with other users as
well as the road side unit (RSU).
 There is some possibility to enter a virus and worm into the
vehicle and disturb the operation of the network.
 In this situation, the sole purpose of the attacker is to increase
the latency of the transmission and use up the bandwidth of the
network so no service is available to other
 users; this is achieved by sending spam messages through the
network.
 It is nearly impossible to control attacks of this type when there
is no basic infrastructure or centralized administration available.
 Blackhole is a different kind of attack and there are two possible cases in any
particular vehicular network.
 When any new user wants to start communication with other users or simply
participate in a network, then other users simply refuse it. In Fig. 11, user D wants
to start communication with user X, but user X refuses it and simply sends a reply
with ‘SORRY’. So now user D tries To communicate with any other user of that
network.
 One user starts communication with other users of the network and it is suddenly
dropped out of the communication.
 In vehicular network, the attackers can launch different kind
of attacks in network and purposes of these attacks are
creating problems for authentic users of network and also
break the security requirements.
 So, availability is one of the key security requirements in
network and due to negative behaviour of attackers and
attackers this security requirements is also effected.
 In this paper, we have provided the detail description about
the availability security requirements and also mentioned the
different types of attackers who launch attacks related to
availability of network.
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  Please download complete research paper from
research gate.

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