An Overview on Security and Privacy Challenges and Their Solutions in Fog-Based Vehicular Application

Abstract

Fog computing is an emerging computing paradigm that extends cloud services to the edge of the network by moving computation tasks from cloud to network edges to reduce response latency in a wireless network. Fog computing inherits the principle of peerto-peer networking, decentralization, and geographical distribution from clouds. Hence, fog computing becomes an ideal platform for readily supporting vehicular applications due to its dynamic support for mobility of clientdevices and low latent heterogeneous communication capabilities. Despite many advantages, a multitude of security and privacy issues affects the platforms and renders it as a target for unknown adversaries. This has significant implication in the development of safety critical applications, such as vehicular cloud and intelligent transportation system. This paper presents, an overview of existing security and privacy vulnerabilities in fog computing, particularly in vehicular networks. Moreover, state-of-the-art security and privacy solutions for fog based vehicular networks are analyzed. In conclusion, open challenges and future research directions are discussed.

A Threat Model for Vehicular Fog Computing

“…Table 4 summarizes threats belonging to the spoofing attack category. In case attackers successfully impersonate an edge device, a fog node's authentication mechanism cannot distinguish the attacker's fake credentials from proper credentials so that the system is vulnerable to malicious commands [53]. Evil and selfish attackers can also pretend to be authenticated as a fog node and to report data honestly with the aim to get benefits and/or to spread false information [32], [37], [49].…”

“…In a message alteration attack, information that passes through an RSU is modified [56]. This weakness arises from a weak or not encrypted communication channel and can cause malfunctions that endanger the drivers' or pedestrians' safety [18], [37], [53]. Message alteration can be performed by MITM attackers that insert themselves between sender and receiver.…”

Towards general Internet of Vehicles networking: Routing protocols survey

“…The common advantage is the alleviation of the burden of computational tasks; in traditional implementations, it is performed at the level of the infrastructure, while vehicles have to collaborate with each others in the vehicular version. The integration of these networking paradigms within the vehicular environment may present some risks for routing [232][233][234][235] :…”

“…234 ⚬ The data stored in cloud and fog servers are accessible by many parties: service providers, authorities, drivers, and passengers. 235 Therefore, the data used for routing process could be compromised by ineligible changes or repositories, thus causing routing problems.…”

“…In fact, the stored data related to vehicles, drivers, manufacturers, and service providers can be disclosed and used to launch an attack by adversaries. 235…”