Secure Crash Reporting in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

The authors present AutoCore, an automated crash reporting application that uses VANETs (Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks) to provide authenticated digital video and telemetry data. This data is recorded by vehicles either involved in or at the scene of a crash and can be used by investigators to reconstruct the events that lead up to the crash. To secure this application, they present a security infrastructure that extends the state of the art in VANET security. In particular, the contributions of this infrastructure include the concept of Road-worthiness Certificates, use of these certificates in a practical scheme for the distribution of cryptographic vehicle credentials issued by regional transportation authorities, a decentralized scheme for conditionally anonymous, inter-vehicle communication.