Authenticating Drone-Assisted Internet of Vehicles Using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Blockchain

The inclusion of drones in Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a current trend that presents significant trade-offs. On the one hand, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide advantages such as enabling ground communications also when physical obstacles limit the connectivity. On the other hand, they increase the attack surface. For instance, physical attacks on drones provide the attacker with credentials that can be used to inject bogus information into the IoV network, thus jeopardizing not only security but also users’ safety. In this scenario, authentication plays a fundamental role to guarantee security. It is however fundamental to develop authentication protocols that can, at the same time, protect ground users’ data and prevent attacks to drones. However, currently available authentication schemes cannot guarantee security in case of attacks to drones. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain-supported authentication protocol for Drone-assisted IoV using Elliptic curve cryptography (BDIVE). Compared to existing authentication protocols, we extend the threat model from an honest-butcurious drone to active attacks against drones. BDIVE provides both energy-efficiency, traceability, and accountability thanks to the use of blockchain at the Trusted Authority (TA). Using Burrow-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, we analyze and prove the security of mutual authentication in BDIVE. We also prove the security of BDIVE against several attacks by implementing it in AVISPA. To assess its scalability and energy efficiency, we implement BDIVE using Omnetpp with its Castalia simulator. The comparison of BDIVE with currently existing authentication protocols, shows that it reduces the energy consumption up to 70% and the computational cost up to 68%, while providing resistance to previously unconsidered attack vectors.