A Hybrid Encryption Framework for Secure and Real‐Time Vehicular Communications

ABSTRACT The rapid expansion of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) has amplified concerns regarding data security, integrity, and privacy. This paper presents SECURIDE, a Secure Intelligent Data Exchange for Connected Vehicles that provides a comprehensive encryption–decryption framework for safeguarding multimedia data and communication channels in VANETs. The system integrates three encryption methods—AES with RSA‐based key management, ChaCha20, and Salsa20—to enable comparative analysis under uniform conditions. Real‐time encryption is performed on captured data, which are securely stored on both a local Single Board Computer (SBC) and remotely on a secure cloud platform. Access control is reinforced through password verification, multi‐factor authentication (MFA), and local private key management. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that Salsa20 delivers the best performance with a total encryption upload time of 0.4255 s and throughput of 0.69 MB/s, confirming its suitability for real‐time VANET operations. ChaCha20 achieved comparable results (0.4534 s, 0.68 MB/s), while AES showed notable efficiency gains after machine learning (ML) based optimization. Integration of a RandomForest ML model reduced CPU load and enhanced throughput across all algorithms, validating the potential of ML‐assisted cryptographic optimization for securing next‐generation VANET environments.