Quantum-Defended Blockchain-Assisted Data Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles

The so-called Internet of Vehicle (IoV) systems will interconnect numerous vehicles to communicate significant information through an Internet of Things (IoT) enabled network. It has emerged as a promising system wherein various data authentication techniques have been introduced using clumsy certificate management and Diffie-Hellman (DH) assumption. However, in the presence of quantum cryptanalysis, DH-type problems could be solved in polynomial-time. In this paper, a novel certificateless data authentication protocol is designed, enabling security features in open wireless communication in the IoV. The proposed protocol resists a quantum attack using lattice cryptography. Further, a reliable blockchain mechanism is shown to provide vehicles’ trustworthiness in batch data verification. Rigorous formal analysis shows the ability of the proposed algorithm to resist existential unforgeability against the chosen-message attack. Nonetheless, the developed protocol supports other essential security functionalities, including unlikability, conditional-traceability, anti-replay, and data authenticity. Performance analysis exhibits the simulation orchestration and shows the way the proposed protocol outperforms other related techniques in energy consumption, data computation, communication, and cryptographic key storage overheads.