Robust ECC-based scheme against side-channel attacks in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs): Enhancing security and performance

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are essential for secure and efficient communication at Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). But, in comparison, the dynamic and resource-constrained nature of VANETs poses design challenges to secure the network robustly while adhering to restrictions on computational and energy costs. This work presents a new ECC-based cryptographic scheme to prevent side-channel attacks (SCAs) and enhance speed in real-time vehicular operations. The scheme utilizes various countermeasures, including dynamic noise injection, masking, and optimized elliptic curve operations, to counteract main vulnerabilities and to optimize system performance. We get a detailed analysis of the proposed scheme concerning three prominent metrics, namely computational costs, communication overhead, and energy consumption, compared with existing works. The experiments showed notable enhancements, thus confirming a 29% increase in computational cost for mutual authentication, 25% for communication overhead for message signing and verification, and 26% for energy consumption in the given phases. These optimizations enable real-time performance, scalability, and energy efficiency in resource-constrained environments, ensuring the scheme’s suitability for deployment in VANETs. Moreover, the proposed scheme demonstrates robust security against several types of attacks, such as replay, impersonation, man-in-the-middle, and advanced side-channel attacks, thereby facilitating safe and reliable vehicular communications. The findings reported in this research lay the groundwork for a secure and efficient VANET, providing a pathway towards adaptive security mechanisms and real-world testing as future directions. Overall, this work presents a holistic perspective to tackle the issues of performance and security in future vehicular networks.