Bring Your Own Reputation: A Feasible Trust System for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

The establishment of trust in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) will require the application of non-conventional measures of information security, such as reputation of the participants. The system proposed in this paper uses the concept of certified reputation, in which vehicles communicate providing digital certificates that include their own reputation level. The vehicles periodically come in contact with certification and traffic control authorities to update their reputation levels, which are determined by the validation of their behavior on the network. Decision-making mechanisms in the receiver vehicles are responsible for evaluating whether the messages are true or false, based on the reputation of the communication nodes. The quantitative analysis of simulated scenarios showed the combination of the central reputation scheme with an appropriate vehicular decision mechanism achieved a total of correct decisions superior than without reputation systems. Considering the constraints of a high mobile network, the proposed system is a feasible way to reduce the risk of anomalous or malicious behavior in a vehicular network.