Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an emerging concept that is believed to help realize the vision of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs). IoV has become an important research area of impactful applications in recent years due to the rapid advancements in vehicular technologies, high throughput satellite communication, the Internet of Things, and cyber–physical systems. IoV enables the integration of smart vehicles with the Internet and system components attributing to their environments, such as public infrastructures, sensors, computing nodes, pedestrians, and other vehicles. By allowing the development of a common information exchange platform between vehicles and heterogeneous vehicular networks, this integration aims to create a better environment and public space for the people as well as to enhance safety for all road users. Being a participatory data exchange and storage, the underlying information exchange platform of IoV needs to be secure, transparent, and immutable in order to achieve the intended objectives of ITS. In this connection, the adoption of blockchain as a system platform for supporting the information exchange needs of IoV has been explored. Due to their decentralized and immutable nature, IoV applications enabled by blockchain are believed to have a number of desirable properties, such as decentralization, security, transparency, immutability, and automation. In this article, we present a contemporary survey on the latest advancement in blockchain for IoV. Particularly, we highlight the different application scenarios of IoV after carefully reviewing the recent literature. We also investigate several key challenges where blockchain is applied in IoV. Furthermore, we present the future opportunities and explore further research directions of IoV as a key enabler of ITS.

Blockchain for the Internet of Vehicles Towards Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Survey

In recent decades, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have improved drivers' safety and have shared information (such as traffic congestion and accidents) in a very efficient way. However, the privacy of vehicles and the security of event information is a major concern. The problem of secure sharing of event information without compromising the trusted third party (TTP) and data storage is the main issue in ITS. Blockchain technologies can resolve this problem. A work has been published on blockchain-based protocol for secure sharing of events and authentication of vehicles. This protocol addresses the issue of the safe storing of event information. However, authentication of vehicles solely depends on the cloud server. As a result, their scheme utilizes the notion of partially decentralized architecture. This paper proposes a novel decentralized architecture for the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) without the cloud server. This work also presents a protocol for securing event information and vehicle authentication using the blockchain mechanism. In this protocol, the registered user accesses the event information securely from the interplanetary file system (IPFS). We incorporate the IPFS, along with blockchain, to store the information in a fully distributed manner. The proposed protocol is compared with the state-of-the-art. The comparison provides desirable security at a reasonable cost. The evaluation of the proposed smart contract in terms of cost (GAS) is also discussed.

Blockchain-Based Secured IPFS-Enable Event Storage Technique With Authentication Protocol in VANET

The use of Blockchain technology has recently become widespread. It has emerged as an essential tool in various academic and industrial fields, such as healthcare, transportation, finance, cybersecurity, and supply chain management. It is regarded as a decentralized, trustworthy, secure, transparent, and immutable solution that innovates data sharing and management. This survey aims to provide a systematic review of Blockchain application to intelligent transportation systems in general and the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) in particular. The survey is divided into four main parts. First, the Blockchain technology including its opportunities, relative taxonomies, and applications is introduced; basic cryptography is also discussed. Next, the evolution of Blockchain is presented, starting from the primary phase of pre-Bitcoin (fundamentally characterized by classic cryptography systems), followed by the Blockchain 1.0 phase, (characterized by Bitcoin implementation and common consensus protocols), and finally, the Blockchain 2.0 phase (characterized by the implementation of smart contracts, Ethereum, and Hyperledger). We compared and identified the strengths and limitations of each of these implementations. Then, the state of the art of Blockchain-based IoV solutions (BIoV) is explored by referring to a large and trusted source database from the Scopus data bank. For a well-structured and clear discussion, the reviewed literature is classified according to the research direction and implemented IoV layer. Useful tables, statistics, and analysis are also presented. Finally, the open problems and future directions in BIoV research are summarized. 

Blockchain Technology for Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Systematic Literature Review

The use of Blockchain technology has recently become widespread. It has emerged as an essential tool in various academic and industrial fields, such as healthcare, transportation, finance, cybersecurity, and supply chain management. It is regarded as a decentralized, trustworthy, secure, transparent, and immutable solution that innovates data sharing and management. This survey aims to provide a systematic review of Blockchain application to intelligent transportation systems in general and the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) in particular. The survey is divided into four main parts. First, the Blockchain technology including its opportunities, relative taxonomies, and applications is introduced; basic cryptography is also discussed. Next, the evolution of Blockchain is presented, starting from the primary phase of pre-Bitcoin (fundamentally characterized by classic cryptography systems), followed by the Blockchain 1.0 phase, (characterized by Bitcoin implementation and common consensus protocols), and finally, the Blockchain 2.0 phase (characterized by the implementation of smart contracts, Ethereum, and Hyperledger). We compared and identified the strengths and limitations of each of these implementations. Then, the state of the art of Blockchain-based IoV solutions (BIoV) is explored by referring to a large and trusted source database from the Scopus data bank. For a well-structured and clear discussion, the reviewed literature is classified according to the research direction and implemented IoV layer. Useful tables, statistics, and analysis are also presented. Finally, the open problems and future directions in BIoV research are summarized.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx7/6287639/9668973/09706476.pdf

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has emerged as an advancement over the traditional Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) towards achieving a more efficient intelligent transportation system that is capable of providing various intelligent services and supporting different applications for the drivers and passengers on roads. In order for the IoV and VANETs environments to be able to offer such beneficial road services, huge amounts of data are generated and exchanged among the different communicated entities in these vehicular networks wirelessly via open channels, which could attract the adversaries and threaten the network with several possible types of security attacks. In this survey, we target the authentication part of the security system while highlighting the efficiency of blockchains in the IoV and VANETs environments. First, a detailed background on IoV and blockchain is provided, followed by a wide range of security requirements, challenges, and possible attacks in vehicular networks. Then, a more focused review is provided on the recent blockchain-based authentication schemes in IoV and VANETs with a detailed comparative study in terms of techniques used, network models, evaluation tools, and attacks counteracted. Lastly, some future challenges for IoV security are discussed that are necessary to be addressed in the upcoming research.

Blockchain-Based Authentication in Internet of Vehicles: A Survey

The rapid development of the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) promotes the development of vehicle electronics, networking, and intelligence. In addition, each vehicle can establish social relationships with others freely in vehicular social networks (VSNs). Multimedia also plays an important entity in vehicles’ data sharing. However, VSNs are still in the early stage of development, and it may bring many security challenges in the process of sharing multimedia data. Both the users’ and vehicles’ privacy may be leaked, and users’ communication habits are easy to be analyzed by adversaries. In addition, the shared multimedia data are more likely to be maliciously tampered with or forged. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving scheme based on blockchain for multimedia data sharing in VSNs. We use cryptographical primitives to hide the real identity of users, vehicles and RSUs. At the same time, we use blockchain to ensure reliable data sources and keep attackers from tampering or forging multimedia data. Finally, the feasibility of our scheme is proved by theoretical security analysis and comprehensive experimental evaluation.

Blockchain-based multimedia sharing in vehicular social networks with privacy protection

The invention relates to a data covert transmission method based on a block chain network, and belongs to the technical field of data covert transmission. According to the method, a public key servingas a certificate of covert communication is exchanged through an out-of-chain key exchange stage; then constructing a special transaction which contains a message encrypted by a sender private key and can leak signature information of the sender private key and is generated by using a Kleptography technology through a covert data construction stage; then, the special transaction is propagated through an in-chain data transmission stage; and finally, reading and detecting each block chain transaction propagated in the block chain network one by one by a receiver in a hidden data extraction stage, and if the signature data in the transaction can extract a private key by using a Kleptograpy technology, indicating that the transaction is a special transaction carrying encrypted data. And thereceiver decrypts the original text by using the extracted private key. Compared with the prior art, the method has the characteristic of high concealment, and an enemy cannot identify a concealed channel according to account characteristics.

Feng Gao

Papers

Blockchain-based multimedia sharing in vehicular social networks with privacy protection

Data covert transmission method based on block chain network