1. Sensors (Basel). 2018 Nov 20;18(11). pii: E4040. doi: 10.3390/s18114040.

Man-In-The-Middle Attacks in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks: Evaluating the Impact of

Attackers' Strategies.

Ahmad F(1), Adnane A(2), Franqueira VNL(3), Kurugollu F(4), Liu L(5).

Author information:
(1)Cyber Security Research Group, College of Engineering and Technology,
University of Derby, Derby DE22 3AW, UK. f.ahmad@derby.ac.uk.
(2)Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11
3TU, UK. a.adnane@lboro.ac.uk.
(3)Cyber Security Research Group, College of Engineering and Technology,
University of Derby, Derby DE22 3AW, UK. v.franqueira@derby.ac.uk.
(4)Cyber Security Research Group, College of Engineering and Technology,
University of Derby, Derby DE22 3AW, UK. f.kurugollu@derby.ac.uk.
(5)College of Engineering and Technology, University of Derby, Derby DE22 3AW,
UK. l.liu@derby.ac.uk.

Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET), a vital component of Intelligent Transportation

Systems (ITS) technology, relies on communication between dynamically connected
vehicles and static Road Side Units (RSU) to offer various applications (e.g.,
collision avoidance alerts, steep-curve warnings and infotainment). VANET has a
massive potential to improve traffic efficiency, and road safety by exchanging
critical information between nodes (vehicles and RSU), thus reducing the
likelihood of traffic accidents. However, this communication between nodes is
subject to a variety of attacks, such as Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks which
represent a major risk in VANET. It happens when a malicious node intercepts or
tampers with messages exchanged between legitimate nodes. In this paper, we
studied the impact on network performance of different strategies which attackers
can adopt to launch MITM attacks in VANET, such as fleet or random strategies. In
particular, we focus on three goals of MITM attacks-message delayed, message
dropped and message tampered. The simulation results indicate that these attacks
have a severe influence on the legitimate nodes in VANET as the network
experience high number of compromised messages, high end-to-end delays and
preeminent packet losses.

DOI: 10.3390/s18114040
PMID: 30463282