Beyond passive detection of sybil attacks in VANET

Dedicated Short Range Communications Safety Applications play an important role in reducing road accidents. These applications rely on wireless communication between vehicles and thus inherit all of the associated security problems. Vehicular Ad Hoc Network security is crucial, since application reliability, and thus safety, must not be compromised. One of the most severe attacks in these networks is the Sybil attack, in which a malicious node forges many fake identities to fool Safety Applications. This research presents an active Sybil attack detection algorithm. It can locate Sybil nodes using short detection packets without adding special hardware or information exchanges. Unlike previous detection approaches, the algorithm is capable of Sybil detection even in dynamic power environments. The proposed algorithm was evaluated in the field using vehicles equipped with Arada LocoMate Classic on-board units.