Energy Internet is well-known nowadays for enabling bidirectional V2G communication; however, with communication and computation abilities, V2G systems become vulnerable to cyber-attacks and unauthorised access. An authentication protocol verifies the identity of an entity, establishes trust, and allows access to authorized resources while preventing unauthorized access. Research challenges for vehicle-to-grid authentication protocols include quantum security, privacy, resilience to attacks, and interoperability. The majority of authentication protocols in V2G systems are based on public-key cryptography and depend on some hard problems like integer factorization and discrete logs to guarantee security, which can be easily broken by a quantum adversary. Besides, ensuring both information security and entity privacy is equally crucial in V2G scenarios. Consequently, this work proposes a quantum-secured privacy-preserving key authentication and communication (QSKA) protocol using superdense coding and a hash function for unconditionally secure V2G communication and privacy. QSKA uses a password-based authentication mechanism, enabling V2G entities to securely transfer passwords using superdense coding. The QSKA security verification is performed in proof-assistant Coq. The security analysis and performance evaluation of the QSKA show its resiliency against well-known security attacks and reveal its enhanced reliability and efficiency with respect to state-of-the-art protocols in terms of computation, communication, and energy overhead.
Energy Internet is well-known nowadays for enabling bidirectional V2G communication; however, with communication and computation abilities, V2G systems become vulnerable to cyber-attacks and unauthorised access. An authentication protocol verifies the identity of an entity, establishes trust, and allows access to authorized resources while preventing unauthorized access. Research challenges for vehicle-to-grid authentication protocols include quantum security, privacy, resilience to attacks, and interoperability. The majority of authentication protocols in V2G systems are based on public-key cryptography and depend on some hard problems like integer factorization and discrete logs to guarantee security, which can be easily broken by a quantum adversary. Besides, ensuring both information security and entity privacy is equally crucial in V2G scenarios. Consequently, this work proposes a quantum-secured privacy-preserving key authentication and communication (QSKA) protocol using superdense coding and a hash function for unconditionally secure V2G communication and privacy. QSKA uses a password-based authentication mechanism, enabling V2G entities to securely transfer passwords using superdense coding. The QSKA security verification is performed in proof-assistant Coq. The security analysis and performance evaluation of the QSKA show its resiliency against well-known security attacks and reveal its enhanced reliability and efficiency with respect to state-of-the-art protocols in terms of computation, communication, and energy overhead.
Abstract Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology enables bidirectional communication and energy interaction between electric vehicles and the power grid. To ensure real-time response and secure communication, authentication protocols in V2G must provide privacy protection, maintain lightweight computation, and resist various malicious attacks. However, the advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to the security of classical cryptographic systems. Furthermore, as vehicles and charging piles are often exposed in public areas and may operate offline, the information stored within these devices requires robust physical protection.To address these challenges, this paper proposes a PUF-based quantum authentication and key agreement protocol for V2G scenarios, which deeply binds classical PUF responses with quantum gate transformation techniques to achieve an efficient joint verification mechanism. The protocol utilizes quantum channels as tamper-proof transmission media to provide secure verification for pre-shared PUF credentials. By fusing classical and quantum communication with hash functions, the proposed scheme achieves lightweight, anonymous, mutual, and dual-factor identity authentication alongside secure key agreement. This integration ensures both communication security and participant privacy. Security analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is lightweight in edge-side classical computation. Under strict system assumptions, it can provide sufficient security and efficiency guarantees for the system, offering a valuable reference solution for V2G networks.
V2G technology enables bidirectional energy transfer from EVs to the grid. It is possible to use the grid to charge EVs and to use EVs to charge the grid during peak grid hours, thus alleviating the problem of grid load fluctuations and improving grid efficiency. Many traditional authentication protocols have been proposed to protect V2G. However, the rapid development of high-speed Internet and the race to organize the development of quantum computers are a great threat to the existing authentication schemes. Therefore, traditional authentication protocols are vulnerable to attacks in the era of quantum computing. In this paper, I propose an extended chaotic mapping-based authentication and quantum key distribution scheme to defend against quantum attacks and prevent known traditional security attacks. The proposed extended chaotic mapping-based authentication protocol is secure under the real or random (ROR) model. Also, experimental results demonstrate that our protocol is lightweight compared to existing authentication protocols, as listed in the performance analysis section. The comparative analysis shows that the protocol is suitable for practical implementation in a quantum environment.
Many cryptographic techniques have been proposed to conceive a secure and privacy-oriented vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) for its practical deployment. The security of these techniques requires a common secret key to be shared between the communicating entities or depend upon the premise that some mathematical problems are computationally hard. However, because of the open nature of the wireless medium, the communication cannot be kept confidential and is prone to eavesdropping. Furthermore, with the arrival of quantum computers, these techniques are prone to quantum attacks—the time complexity of the assumed hard problem gets reduced from millions of years to a few seconds. In this paper, we propose a conditional privacy-preserving authentication scheme based on a quantum key distribution protocol for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. Our scheme inherits the properties of the quantum key distribution protocol. It does not require a secret authentication key to be transmitted conventionally and is resistant to quantum attacks. Apart from protecting VANETs against generic security threats, including node impersonation, message tampering, and repudiation, our scheme defends VANETs against man-in-the-middle attacks, replay attacks, etc. Besides, our protocol ensures message unlinkability, vehicle-identity privacy, and vehicle traceability if a vehicle misbehaves. The results obtained from the performance evaluation of our scheme confirm reasonable values of information leakage, key length, bit error probability, etc.
Smart grids, steering an energy revolution through smart metering infrastructure, face cybersecurity threats and unauthorized access risks. Within these systems, classical authentication protocols validate identities, fostering trust and enabling access to authorized resources, while preventing unauthorized access. However, classical authentication protocols are predominantly dependent on public-key cryptography, rooted in computational hard problems such as integer factorization and discrete logs to uphold security. Nevertheless, these computational hard problems can be easily compromised by quantum adversaries. Furthermore, quantum-resistant smart meter authentication protocols are either deemed impractical or reliant on quantum hard problems, potentially lacking future-proof security. Moreover, maintaining SG entity privacy holds equal significance. Consequently, this article introduces the Quantum-Secure Privacy-Preserving Smart Meter Authentication (Q-Secure-P2-SMA) protocol. It utilizes semi-quantum key distribution and a hash function to facilitate quantum-resistant metering data communication, with a focus on privacy and practicality. The security analysis and performance evaluation conducted for Q-Secure-P2-SMA confirm its resilience against well-known security threats, showcasing improved efficiency compared to existing state-of-art-protocols across computation, communication, and energy overhead. Notably, the Q-Secure-P2-SMA doesn’t necessitate quantum capability among all SG entities, making it more practical and relevant in real-world scenarios.
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 rise of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has led to an increased reliance on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication networks to ensure real-time information sharing, situational awareness, and cooperative decision-making. However, the integration of quantum computing into cybersecurity threatens the cryptographic foundations upon which current V2V communication protocols rely. As quantum computers grow closer to practical implementation, traditional public-key encryption schemes—such as RSA and ECC—are rendered vulnerable to attacks from quantum algorithms like Shor’s and Grover’s. This review explores the necessity of adopting quantum-resistant cryptographic protocols to secure V2V communication frameworks. The study critically examines post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, including lattice-based, hash-based, code-based, multivariate polynomial, and isogeny-based schemes, with a focus on their applicability to latency-sensitive and resource-constrained vehicular environments. Furthermore, the paper evaluates the performance, scalability, and implementation challenges of integrating these cryptographic primitives into real-time autonomous systems. Case studies of pilot implementations and emerging research are reviewed to highlight the practicality of these protocols in vehicular edge computing and 5G-enabled automotive networks. The paper concludes by proposing a forward-looking roadmap for standardization and integration of quantum-resilient cryptography in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), ensuring long-term data integrity, authentication, and privacy across V2V infrastructures.