VCom: Secure and Efficient Vehicle-to-Vehicle Message Communication Protocol

Vehicles are especially capable of exchanging pertinent information with nearby vehicles. However, there are multiple challenges like secure data exchange, fast message transmission, dynamic topology, and user data protection while transmitting relevant information between moving vehicles on the road. Therefore, researchers suggested different vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) message communication and verification mechanisms, but they are vulnerable to crucial security attacks. Furthermore, the existing V2V communication schemes relatively require high operational costs for the implementation, taking more time and computational resources for road safety and traffic data exchanges. In this article, we propose a secure and efficient V2V message communication protocol (named as VCom) for vehicle users using a low-cost function (i.e., SHA-256) while preserving user anonymity. The security proof and analysis are discussed for the VCom to confirm its security and user privacy strengths against different security attributes and attacks. The test-bed implementation results show that the VCom is comparatively efficient in the computational cost, communication overhead, storage cost, and energy consumption.