Abstract—Research related to Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) has received some significant attention among academia. Its security and privacy still become a central issue that is widely open to discussion. The authentication schemes deployed in VANETs have a substantial impact on the security and privacy of the disseminated messages. Recently Gu et al. published an authentication scheme that claims can provide authentication, anonymity, unlinkability, privacy protection, and traceability. Unfortunately, by doing our cryptanalysis, we also found out that Road-Side Units (RSUs) in Gu et al.’s scheme are threatened by an impersonation attack, where any registered RSU' can impersonate this visiting RSU. To overcome the issue, we modified the RSU’s identity (Ri) calculation in RSU registration phase to become Ri=RSUi1bLi/ instead of Ri=g21bLi/. By this improvement, our proposed scheme can withstand an RSU impersonation attack. Therefore, while maintaining the efficiency of the original work, we have added an additional security aspect to the proposed scheme.

 

Keywords—authentication, privacy, Road-Side Unit (RSU), security, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs)


Cite: Eko Fajar Cahyadi, Cahya Damarjati, Jafaruddin Gusti Amri Ginting, Bongga Arifwidodo, Alfin Hikmaturokhman, and Min-Shiang Hwang, “Preventing an RSU Impersonation Attack on Symmetric-Based Scheme in VANETs," Journal of Communications, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 291-298, 2025.

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