A risk and security assessment of VANET availability using attack tree concept

Abstract

The challenging nature of insecure wireless channels and the open-access environment make the protection of vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) a particularly critical issue. Researchers and interested authorities have therefore paid more attention to this issue. Therefore, robust approaches to protect this network's security and privacy against adversaries and attacks need to be improved, trying to achieve an adequate level, to secure the confidential information of drivers and passengers. Accordingly, to improve the security of VANET, it is necessary to carry out a risk assessment, in order to evaluate the risk that faces this network. This paper focuses on the security threats in vehicular network especially on the availability of this network. We propose a novel risk assessment approach to evaluate the risk of the attack that the attacker can lead against the availability of VANET. We adopt a tree structure called attack tree to model the attacker's potential attack strategies. Based on this attack tree model, we can estimate the degree that a certain threat can lead to the VANET and identify possible attack sequences that an attacker may launch against the availability of this network. Then we utilize the multi-attribute utility theory to calculate the system’s total risk value also the probabilities of each attack sequence. The analysis results can provide support for decision-makers to make corresponding protection measures against the attack on the availability of this network.