Blockchain-Based Key Management and Security Decisions in Internet of Vehicles

In the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) framework, vehicle communication, data security, and reliability are paramount, as they are responsible for monitoring and controlling vehicle operating conditions, traffic flow, and environmental parameters. Effective encryption keys and key management mechanisms are required to ensure the security and reliability of vehicle nodes. Although vehicle nodes in IoV typically possess substantial computational power and storage capacity, expanding the network and increasing security demands can lead to greater resource consumption. While existing key management schemes leverage blockchain to decentralize management and mitigate the risks associated with centralized systems, they still need to be improved, such as excessive resource consumption for key generation and inefficient handling of suspicious nodes. We propose a blockchain-based lightweight security management and decision-making scheme for intelligent vehicles (BS-VSM) to address these challenges. This scheme incorporates blockchain technology to ensure decentralization while introducing a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) model to optimize decision making regarding node management. Additionally, it employs a shared key generation mechanism that combines elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) with bivariate polynomial calculations, enhancing system reliability while reducing resource overhead and vehicle node wear. Security and overhead analyses demonstrate that the BS-VSM scheme is efficient in terms of storage, computation, and communication overhead and significantly enhances the trustworthiness of distributed networks in IoV.