Cyber Attack Detection Algorithm Using Traffic Flow Theory

摘要

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are expected to play an important role in our lives. They will improve the traffic safety and bring about a revolution on the driving experience. However, these benefits are counterbalanced by possible attacks that threaten not only the vehicle's security, but also passengers' lives. One of the most common attacks is the Sybil attack, which is even more dangerous than others because it could be the starting point of many other attacks in VANETs. This paper proposes a distributed approach allowing the detection of Sybil attacks by using the traffic flow theory. The key idea here is that each vehicle will monitor its neighborhood in order to detect an eventual Sybil attack. This is achieved by a comparison between the real accurate speed of the vehicle and the one estimated using the V2V communications with vehicles in the vicinity. This estimated speed is obtained using the traffic flow fundamental diagram of the road's portion where the vehicles are moving. A mathematical model that evaluates the rate of Sybil attack detection according to the traffic density is proposed. Then, this model is validated through some numerical simulations conducted using MATLAB tool.