A Distributed Mix-Context-Based Method for Location Privacy in Road Networks

Abstract

Preserving location privacy is increasingly an essential concern in Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs). Vehicles broadcast beacon messages in an open form that contains information including vehicle identity, speed, location, and other headings. An adversary may track the various locations visited by a vehicle using sensitive information transmitted in beacons such as vehicle identity and location. By matching the vehicle identity used in beacon messages at various locations, an adversary learns the location history of a vehicle. This compromises the privacy of the vehicle driver. In existing research work, pseudonyms are used in place of the actual vehicle identity in the beacons. Pseudonyms should be changed regularly to safeguard the location privacy of vehicles. However, applying simple change in pseudonyms does not always provide location privacy. Existing schemes based on mix zones operate efficiently in higher traffic environments but fail to provide privacy in lower vehicle traffic densities. In this paper, we take the problem of location privacy in diverse vehicle traffic densities. We propose a new Crowd-based Mix Context (CMC) privacy scheme that provides location privacy as well as identity protection in various vehicle traffic densities. The pseudonym changing process utilizes context information of road such as speed, direction and the number of neighbors in transmission range for the anonymisation of vehicles, adaptively updating pseudonyms based on the number of a vehicle neighbors in the vicinity. We conduct formal modeling and specification of the proposed scheme using High-Level Petri Nets (HPLN). Simulation results validate the effectiveness of CMC in terms of location anonymisation, the probability of vehicle traceability, computation time (cost) and effect on vehicular applications.

SGO: Semantic Group Obfuscation for Location-Based Services in VANETS

“…High-level Petri nets (HLPNs) are used for two reasons [ 4 ]: to simulate the proposed scheme and present mathematical modeling to analyze the structure properties and behavior of the scheme. The benefits are that it can verify the interconnection of system components and processes, information flow, and processing.…”

“…[ 3 ]. Dedicated short-range communication (DSRC), cellular networks, WiMax, WiFi, and VeMac are the wireless communication technologies utilized in VANETs [ 4 ].…”

Anonymity Assurance Using Efficient Pseudonym Consumption in Internet of Vehicles

“…When traffic is lower, two pseudonyms are generated and exchanged randomly with each other. The neighbors accept the correct pseudonym and the false one is excluded [22]. The benefit of this technique is that the adversary cannot trace the target vehicle for a long time successfully.…”