A trust model for VANETs using malicious-aware multiple routing

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable multi-hop communication among vehicles, promoting information sharing and smarter collaborative driving. However, VANETs are facing several challenges due to the open wireless communication environment. Attackers may maliciously drop or alter packets so that the receiver cannot obtain correct information. In addition, the high mobility of vehicles may lead to link failures, consequently resulting in packet loss. In this paper, we propose a multipath-based trust model (MPTM), in which the reliability of packet transmission is guaranteed by data redundancy and the detection of potential attackers is achieved by trust evaluation. Specifically, we present a route discovery mechanism to find multiple routes that avoid potential attackers, which reduces the risk of attacks on redundant packets. The receivers identify correct information based on two factors including content consistency and route information. An attacker detection module is presented to evaluate the trustworthiness of vehicles involved in packet transmission and vehicles with trust value below a threshold are detected as attackers. We conducted extensive experiments using OMNeT++ simulation platform, considering various attack scenarios. Experiment results show that MPTM can reach 90% packet delivery ratio and effectively detect attackers in terms of 90% detection precision.