Post-Quantum Verifiable Decryption for Secure and Scalable V2I Communication in Consumer Driven-Intelligent Transportation Systems

Efficient cryptographic verification methods are critical for secure communication in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), especially with the proliferation of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) devices powered by consumer technology. However, traditional zero-knowledge proofs often face efficiency limitations. This paper proposes a novel verifiable decryption scheme for IoV applications within ITS, leveraging the Module Learning with Errors (MLWE) and Module Small Integer Solution (MSIS) problems to address these challenges using widely available consumer technology platforms. The scheme integrates a compression function tailored for IoV devices and consumer technology in intelligent transportation systems, coupled with error estimation techniques, effectively mitigating disparities in equality relationships between the private data of the prover and verifier during the encryption and decryption process. This enables the prover to selectively share partial information, reducing discrepancies and transforming the verifiable decryption problem into a proof that a vector in the ring satisfies a linear relationship. A rigorous theoretical analysis demonstrates the schemes correctness, security, communication overhead, and computational complexity, reducing its soundness and zero-knowledge properties to the hardness assumption of the MSIS problem. The paper also recommends two parameter sets for different security levels that are feasible for deployment on consumer technology devices. To evaluate the schemes practicality, a C-language implementation was developed and tested on typical consumer technology hardware. Experimental results show significant advantages in proof size and computation time for a single ciphertext compared to existing schemes, making the proposed method highly efficient for ITS scenarios. This verifiable decryption scheme offers a post-quantum cryptographic solution that ensures secure, efficient, and scalable data exchange, aligning with the stringent demands of intelligent transportation systems and leveraging the accessibility of consumer technology.