PUCA: A pseudonym scheme with strong privacy guarantees for vehicular ad-hoc networks

Pseudonym certificates are the state-of-the-art approach for secure and privacy-friendly message authentication in vehicular ad-hoc networks. However, most of the proposed pseudonym schemes focus on privacy among participants. Privacy towards backend providers is usually (if at all) only protected by separation of responsibilities. The protection can be overridden, when the entities collaborate, e.g. when revocation of long-term credentials is required. This approach puts the users' privacy at risk, if the backend systems are not fully trusted. We propose PUCA - a scheme that provides full anonymity for honest users, even against colluding backend providers. The scheme uses anonymous credentials for authentication with the backend, while leaving the communication among vehicles and with road side units unchanged and in compliance with existing standards. For removal of misbehaving vehicles from the system, we leverage a privacy-friendly revocation mechanism, that does not require resolution of pseudonyms. With our scheme, we demonstrate that strong and verifiable privacy protection in vehicular networks can be achieved, while fulfilling common security requirements, such as sybil-resistance and revocation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.