CSLPPS: Concerted Silence-Based Location Privacy Preserving Scheme for Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) connects vehicles together and also to other internet of things components such as sensors and smart devices. The huge amount of data generated by these components is stored in the cloud, so does the services offered which are not limited to safety applications but also to infotainment where most of these services use the position and identity of the vehicle. Due to these requirements, the privacy of road users is at threat. Thus, preserving it is highly important as it is directly related to their safety. If a specific user is targeted on the road by an attacker who knows his/her identity and real-time location, the consequences can vary from simple stalking to assassination. This paper proposes a new solution called Concerted Silence-based Location Privacy Preserving Scheme for Internet of Vehicles (CSLPPS) that ensures the anonymous and unlinkable participation in the IoV location-based services and vehicular networks safety applications. This scheme relies on the synchronization of the identifier change between the cooperative vehicles to enter a silent period simultaneously before continuing their cyber-activity with new identifiers. The simulation and study of performance proved efficiency of CSLPPS against a modeled global passive attacker and when compared to state-of-art solution.