Trust in IoV: UAV-Assisted Trust Management Scheme for Secure Communication of Connected Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an emerging technology that enhances traffic security and transportation efficiency by enabling smart, connected vehicles to communicate and exchange messages. IoV networks are a key component of intelligent transportation systems in smart cities. However, these networks are vulnerable to malicious vehicles that disseminate deceptive messages or impersonate legitimate entities, which compromises network security. These adversarial vehicles jeopardize the integrity and availability of the IoV network, exposing it to various security threats, including both insider and outsider attacks. Such attacks can severely undermine the trust and reliability of communication between legitimate vehicles. To address these challenges, we propose TMSU-IoV, a UAV-assisted trust management scheme that integrates identity authentication technique and trust evaluation mechanism to ensure secure communication of connected vehicles in IoV networks. To counteract outsider attacks, we introduce a certificateless signature-based authentication method that guarantees the authenticity of messages exchanged between vehicles and UAVs. To mitigate insider threats, we propose a quality of service (QoS)-based trust evaluation mechanism. This mechanism consists of a prior trust evaluation method and a posterior trust evaluation method, designed to enhance both the credibility and timeliness of trust evaluation for connected vehicles. Formal security analysis confirms that the TMSU-IoV effectively resists a variety of insider and outsider attacks. Performance evaluation experiments demonstrate that the TMSU-IoV can accurately assess the trust levels of connected vehicles and outperform traditional trust evaluation methods.