A Taxonomy of Sybil Attacks in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET)

Introduction

Vehicles on the road have been increased tremendously in last few decades, this resulted in heavy traffic on road. Due to increased traffic on road, probability of road accidents and other fatalities also increases very rapidly. Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) is a network which play an important role in providing road safety and security of people by enabling instant communication between vehicles, provide a quick relief in case of accidents and also to monitor vehicles about rash driving and over speeding. In VANET one vehicle can pass messages to other connected vehicle so that the other vehicle can know in advance about traffic situation and other fatalities on road. The people in VANET can use entertainment services through which they can play audio and video etc. There are certain security risks which are serious concern about the safety and security of people. The highly dynamic environment of VANET due to change of their positions rapidly, they move in and out of range so quickly appears to be challenging and it becomes very difficult to establish a reliable end-to-end communication path to maintain efficient data transfer. Message delivery time is also a major concern in VANET. Security of data dissemination in VANET is crucial otherwise any mishappening can occur on road. Authors in this chapter highlights the key security issues of VANET and discussed state of art detection algorithms for Sybil attack.

VANET Structure

VANET structure has major components include Application Unit (AU), On Board Unit (OBU) and Roadside Unit (RSU) in providing communication. AU & OBU are devices which are attached with vehicles while RSU placed alongside the road and helpful in providing internet services. (Kumar Karn & Prakash Gupta, 2016).

Application Unit (AU): This unit is responsible for providing communication inside vehicles. It helps in monitoring driver about fatigue or drowsiness. The AU can be connected to the OBU through a wired or wireless connection.

Figure 1.

VANET architecture

On Board Unit (OBU): It is a wave device mounted on-board in a vehicle and responsible for exchanging information between vehicles and roadside unit (RSU). The major functions of OBU in VANETs are ad-hoc and geographical routing, wireless radio access, network congestion control, reliable message transfer and data security.

Road Side Unit: The road side unit (RSU) is fixed along the road side or in a particular locations such as junctions or parking areas which is helpful in providing messages to vehicles in the vicinity (Saini, Alelaiwi, & El Saddik, 2015). It has radio frequency, high power, and long-range antenna to access a wireless medium. RSU is responsible for forwarding data packets to OBUs in its range and other RSUs. It Works as a gateway to provide Internet connectivity to OBUs.