Provably secure authentication for the internet of vehicles

Rapid technological development has far-reaching implications for every aspect of life, including transportation. The emerging Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) based on the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) requires robust security measures due to the public channels used to communicate between vehicles and trusted authorities. These channels create opportunities for adversaries to intercept and exploit the transmitted data, leading to severe attacks. Moreover, cars are often parked in public areas, making them vulnerable to physical attacks such as theft of smart cards/devices, cloning, and impersonation. In this paper, we propose a new protocol for IoV that addresses these security concerns. Our protocol offers user authentication based on biometrics, using a biometric key to prevent revealing data from theft of smart cards/devices. Additionally, we use The Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) to resist cloning attacks. We have conducted an informal analysis, which confirms that our protocol fulfills security features. Furthermore, we have conducted a formal analysis using the RoR model and the Scyther tool to verify that our protocol achieves security properties and withstands well-known attacks. We also demonstrate the time complexity and show that our protocol has low computation time. Therefore, our protocol is secure and has a low computation time.