Security challenges for the intelligent transportation system

There has been considerable work addressing security in vehicular network systems for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) usages. We examine the risks and proposed security solutions in this space. Our analysis leads to several key observations. The current security work misses many practical ITS usage and security requirements, since it fails to consider practical economic models and critical ITS functional requirements as a control system. Consequently, the standardized ITS communication message authenticity solutions have little utility relative to addressing the real threats. Furthermore, we discovered that fundamental re-thinking of the public key infrastructure support for secure vehicular communication is essential, because of the multi-stakeholder and cross-domain nature of many ITS usages. Based on our analysis, we call for future research directions in analyzing practical problems and designing solutions to secure vehicular communication in order to achieve its full potential. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.2.0 [Computer-Communication Networks]: General - Security and protection. General Terms Security, Reliability, Verification, Design, Human Factors.