RelCLAS: A Reliable Malicious KGC-Resistant Certificateless Aggregate Signature Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) enables a more efficient and secure traffic environment by integrating several emerging technologies. The technology of certificateless aggregate signature (CLAS) is widely utilized to guarantee secure communications in VANET. However, the legitimation of vehicles’ public keys cannot be verified effectively in existing CLAS protocols for VANET. Thus, a malicious key generation center (KGC) can masquerade as any vehicle and generate legitimate signatures. In this article, a reliable malicious KGC-resistant CLAS protocol, called RelCLAS, is proposed to eradicate this problem. RelCLAS solves the key escrow problem owning to the combination of registration-based encryption (RBE) and CLAS. Partial public keys selected by vehicles are stored in a key accumulator to prevent malicious KGC from forging valid signatures. Formal security proof demonstrates that RelCLAS satisfies the fundamental security requirements of VANET. Extensive simulations illustrate that RelCLAS is efficient, reliable, and feasible.