Token-Based Authorization and Authentication for Secure Internet of Vehicles Communication

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) communication platform provides seamless information exchange facilities in a dynamic mobile city environment. Heterogeneous communication is a common medium for information exchange through autonomous resources distributed and accessed using infrastructure units. Cyber-security is a primary concern in accessing autonomous information from the distributed resources due to anonymity and different types of targeted adversaries. This article proposes token-based authorization and authentication (TAA) for securing IoV communications. The proposed method relies on blockchain technology and random forest learning for authorization and key management for authentication, respectively. In this process, frequent change in tokens and key update features are restricted in a view to maximize the seamlessness in information exchange. Authentication is preceded by knowledge of the data classification without errors to prevent additional overhead. Blockchain-based authorization helps to update specific fields of the tokens to retain the communication ratio by reducing vehicle-to-vehicle losses. The performance of the proposed method is assessed using appropriate simulations for these metrics by varying vehicle density, error rate, and classification sets.