With the rapid development of intelligent connected vehicles, networked vehicles carry a large amount of sensitive data. Secure authentication and controlled access to data in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) are essential to protect vehicular private data. We propose a quantum-key-based authentication and key agreement scheme for IoV, called QKBAKA. Its features are as follows: 1) Role-Based Data Access Control Strategy: Access to private data requires authorization and management by vehicle owners. 2) Vehicle privatization manages quantum session keys. The quantum random number generator (QRNG) deployed on the vehicle side generates quantum session keys and realizes secure agreement through multilevel quantum keys. The multilevel quantum key includes the quantum prefilled key, the quantum protection key and the quantum session key. 3) Secure and Efficient Authentication Scheme: QKBAKA uses quantum keys, symmetric encryption algorithms, and hash algorithms. It is relatively secure for quantum computing and has better performance. Security analysis shows that QKBAKA is secure under the real-or-random (ROR) model and meets the security requirements of IoV. Performance evaluation shows that, compared with the existing schemes, QKBAKA reduces computation and communication costs by 74.83%–98.59% and 28.7%–83.1%. Simulation and real vehicle tests show that QKBAKA has good communication stability and feasibility.
With the rapid development of intelligent connected vehicles, networked vehicles carry a large amount of sensitive data. Secure authentication and controlled access to data in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) are essential to protect vehicular private data. We propose a quantum-key-based authentication and key agreement scheme for IoV, called QKBAKA. Its features are as follows: 1) Role-Based Data Access Control Strategy: Access to private data requires authorization and management by vehicle owners. 2) Vehicle privatization manages quantum session keys. The quantum random number generator (QRNG) deployed on the vehicle side generates quantum session keys and realizes secure agreement through multilevel quantum keys. The multilevel quantum key includes the quantum prefilled key, the quantum protection key and the quantum session key. 3) Secure and Efficient Authentication Scheme: QKBAKA uses quantum keys, symmetric encryption algorithms, and hash algorithms. It is relatively secure for quantum computing and has better performance. Security analysis shows that QKBAKA is secure under the real-or-random (ROR) model and meets the security requirements of IoV. Performance evaluation shows that, compared with the existing schemes, QKBAKA reduces computation and communication costs by 74.83%–98.59% and 28.7%–83.1%. Simulation and real vehicle tests show that QKBAKA has good communication stability and feasibility.
Advanced connection and autonomous features are being made possible by the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), which is causing a revolution in transportation. Strong security measures are required, however, because the prevalence of connected devices also increases the likelihood of cyberattacks and data breaches. This study introduces a new method for protecting IoV networks, which combines Blockchain technology with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), creating a security architecture with two layers. Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technologies enable autonomous driving and real-time data exchange by connecting vehicles to infrastructure and one another. These advancements make things safer and more efficient, but they also put sensitive information at risk of cyberattacks. Modern security measures are essential since traditional encryption methods are becoming more and more insecure. To provide encryption that is theoretically unbreakable, the suggested system uses QKD to create and distribute cryptographic keys based on principles of quantum mechanics. To improve trust and transparency, blockchain technology is used to record these keys and any subsequent transactions in an immutable, distributed ledger. A hybrid architecture, with QKD securing the key exchange and Blockchain ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the communication, is designed as part of the integration process. Improved security and speed have been shown in simulations and prototype implementations of the QKD-Blockchain architecture in IoV networks. By preventing eavesdropping and key interception, the QKD technique kept the communication channel secure. With an average delay of only about 2 milliseconds, QKD performed admirably and was well below the permitted range for real-time vehicular communications. On average, validation durations for transactions were 5 milliseconds, which was a little overhead due to blockchain integration. The system efficiently handled up to 10,000 transactions per second without affecting security or performance, proving that it can serve massive IoV networks, according to scalability testing. Under high-load scenarios, the framework maintained consistent performance and security, proving its robustness in stress tests. Together, QKD and Blockchain provide a scalable and trustworthy option for future vehicular communication networks, and these results show how feasible and robust it is to use them to protect IoV systems. An intriguing approach to the security issues plaguing IoV systems is the integration of QKD with Blockchain technology. An unparalleled level of protection against cyber threats is provided by the dual-layered system, which guarantees strong encryption and data integrity. This fresh method may lead to improved and more trustworthy IoV networks by establishing new benchmarks for secure vehicular communication. In order to optimize the implementation and tackle any new issues that may arise, more research and development should be conducted.
As Vehicular Networks evolve toward the Intelligent Internet of Vehicles (IoV), ensuring quantum-resilient security has become essential. The current 5G Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol, although well-established, relies on classical cryptographic primitives such as AES, Message Authentication Codes (MACs), and Key Derivation Functions (KDFs), which are increasingly vulnerable to advances in quantum computing. To mitigate this, we propose PQAKA, a Post-Quantum Authentication and Key Agreement protocol tailored for 5G-based Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication. By integrating the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-standardized Module-Lattice Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM), the proposed scheme achieves mutual authentication and forward secrecy against classical and quantum adversaries while maintaining compatibility with existing Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF)/Authentication Server Function (AUSF)/Unified Data Management (UDM) entities. Mapped to the 5G control plane, the protocol ensures that vehicles are authenticated before accessing Internet-based services such as navigation, traffic & weather updates, and over-the-air software delivery. Formal verification through ProVerif validates the correctness and security guarantees of the PQAKA protocol, while the informal analysis substantiates its resilience against a spectrum of adversarial vectors. Under hostile threat conditions, PQAKA achieves an authentication success rate of 72%, indicating its potential in quantum-resilient vehicular communication architectures.
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technology has recently emerged as a popular area of research, and vehicle-to-cloud communication forms the basis of the IoV. This process involves uploading a large amount of information related to the vehicle and its location. The security of vehicle-to-cloud communication thus has a significant impact on the safety of the IoV. This paper proposes a vehicle-to-cloud communication system based on lightweight authentication and extended Quantum Key Distribution. The system supports the wireless distribution of session keys between vehicles and the Quantum Cloud Server (QCS) by using a WAN (Wide Area Network), and supports the wired transmission of quantum keys between the QCS and the Telematics Service Provider (TSP) through a LAN (Local Area Network) by using the BB84 protocol. The system can implement encrypted communication based on quantum physical security in a hybrid network. Moreover, we propose a lightweight identity authentication scheme. An analysis of its performance shows that the proposed system requires a small amount of computation and incurs a low communication overhead. This scheme is applicable to most Internet devices with low computing and communication capacity, and can potentially be used in the IoV framework. We conducted simulations of the proposed system and experiments to test its performance. The maximum average delay in communication in experiments was 40.681 ms and the maximum rate of packet loss was 0.1222%. The proposed system can thus ensure safe and efficient IoV communication.
The rapid advance of manufacturing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, aka drones) has led to a rise in the use of their civilian and commercial applications. The access of these drones to controlled airspace can be efficiently coordinated through particular layered network architecture, often referred to as the Internet-of-Drones (IoD). The nature of IoD, which is deployed in an open-access environment, brings significant safety and security concerns. Classical cryptosystems such as elliptic curve cryptography, Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, and Diffie-Hellman are essential building blocks to secure communication in the IoD. However, with the rapid development of quantum computing, it will be easy to break public-key cryptosystems using efficient quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm. Thus, building quantum-safe solutions to enhance IoD security has become imperative. Fortunately, quantum technologies can provide unconditional security solutions to protect data and communications in the IoD environment. This paper proposes a quantum-based scheme to prevent unauthorized drones from accessing a specific flight zone and authenticates the identities and shared secret messages of involved entities. To do so, we used a quantum channel to encode the private information based on a pre-shared key and a random key generated in session. The involved entities also perform mutual authentication and share a secret key. We also provide the security proofs and analysis of the proposed scheme that indicates its resistance to well-known attacks.
In Social Internet of Vehicles (SIoV) environments, fog computing plays a crucial role in supporting real-time services by reducing the latency inherent in cloud-based architectures. However, fog nodes are typically deployed in physically exposed roadside environments and can be operated by several system operators, making them vulnerable to physical compromise and unauthorized access. Despite these threats, many existing authentication schemes assume fog nodes to be fully trusted or honest-but-curious, allowing them to decrypt transmitted data using a session key shared among vehicles, fog nodes, and cloud servers. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a quantum-secure pairwise key agreement scheme that establishes distinct session keys for vehicle–fog, fog–cloud, and vehicle–cloud communications. This design effectively prevents the disclosure of sensitive information even in the event of fog node compromise. Furthermore, Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are employed to mitigate physical capture attacks, while lattice-based cryptography based on the Module Learning with Errors (MLWE) problem is integrated to ensure resistance against quantum computing attacks. The security of the proposed protocol is rigorously validated through formal analysis using AVISPA, BAN logic, and the Real-or-Random (RoR) model, in addition to informal security analysis. Comparative performance evaluations against related schemes demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves a balance between efficiency and security, making it well suited for practical deployment in SIoV environments.
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a hot research issue at home and abroad. However, with the development of intelligent, sharing and network connection of IoV technology, the security protection of IoV communication has become a focus. Traditional encryption technology relies on encryption systems, whose security relies on the difficulty of solving mathematical problems and cannot resist quantum computing attacks. The security of classical encryption-based data transmission has been challenged. Therefore, it is imperative to realize secure transmission in IoV based on quantum technologies such as quantum teleportation. In this paper, based on the secure transmission of shared secret states, the author has designed a model for the secure transmission of data among multiple vehicles, which does not require trusted client nodes and thus improves the performance against node attacks. Further, considering the communication distance in practical situations, the quantum repeater is introduced to construct a quantum state transmission model based on the quantum repeater in IoV to realize secure communication among multiple vehicles. Compared with traditional data transmission, the quantum state transmission data is more secure and unbreakable, which provides a new idea for constructing secure communication in IoV.