Formal verification of a V2X scheme mixing traditional PKI and group signatures

Abstract

Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications are expected to reshape road mobility in the increasingly near future. This type of communication allows a vehicle to transmit information, such as its position and speed, which can be used for different applications. However, despite the benefits, the increased connectivity and data sent over the network may expose the vehicle to a significant number of cyber attacks. This paper takes one of the schemes proposed in the literature to protect the security and privacy of the vehicles, and analyses it from a security and privacy perspective using Proverif. Specifically, this scheme is unique in combining asymmetric encryption with digital certificates and group signatures used by vehicles to self-certify those certificates. We present a formal model able to capture all the main aspects of the protocol and the context in which it works, and show how security and privacy properties can be expressed for formal verification in Proverif. Our analysis conducted on the model of the protocol revealed some weaknesses for which we tried to provide a solution.