PUF-driven Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles

WU Linjun; DING Lin

doi:10.11999/JEIT260606

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WU Linjun, DING Lin. PUF-driven Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT260606

Citation:

WU Linjun, DING Lin. PUF-driven Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT260606

WU Linjun, DING Lin. PUF-driven Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT260606

Citation:

WU Linjun, DING Lin. PUF-driven Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT260606

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PUF-driven Secure Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Internet of Vehicles

doi: 10.11999/JEIT260606 cstr: 32379.14.JEIT260606

WU Linjun,
DING Lin^,

1.
College of Information Science and Engineering, Hunan Institute of Engineering, Xiangtan 411104, China
2.
College of Integrated Circuits, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Funds: Hunan Natural Science Foundation (2026JJ90049), Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (25A0527)

Received Date: 2026-05-14
Accepted Date: 2026-09-14
Rev Recd Date: 2026-09-02

Available Online: 2026-09-20

Abstract

Abstract

Objective In the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), vehicles often transmit Basic Safety Messages through open wireless links to support road safety and traffic management. However, these messages may expose vehicle identities and travel information. Attackers may collect messages over time and associate them with the same vehicle. Therefore, vehicle authentication should protect both network security and user privacy. Many existing anonymous authentication schemes require complex cryptographic operations, resulting in high computation and communication costs for resource-constrained On-Board Units (OBUs). Some schemes also store long-term secret keys in vehicle devices, which may be exposed through physical extraction or side-channel attacks. A Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) uses random process variations generated during chip fabrication to construct unique hardware features. It can generate device-related responses without directly storing secret keys. Based on this property, this paper proposes a PUF-driven secure anonymous authentication protocol for IoV. The proposed protocol aims to reduce the risk of long-term key storage, protect vehicle identities, and reduce authentication overhead for vehicles. Methods The proposed protocol adopts a response-Feedback-based Lightweight Anti-Machine-learning-attack PUF (FLAM-PUF) as the hardware root of trust. FLAM-PUF combines an Arbiter PUF (APUF) with a reconfigurable Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR). The PUF response is fed back to update the LFSR state, which hides the relationship between Challenge–Response Pairs (CRPs) and increases the difficulty of machine-learning modeling attacks (Fig. 1). The system consists of a Center Management (CM), Local Management (LM) entities, Roadside Units (RSUs), and vehicle On-Board Units (OBUs) (Fig. 2). During initialization, reliable CRPs are collected in a trusted environment and transmitted to the CM through a secure channel. The main protocol parameters are listed in Table 1. A PUF challenge is used to generate a vehicle pseudonym, while the corresponding PUF response is used as authentication parameters and session key data. The OBU can recover the required PUF response from its local PUF when needed, eliminating the need to store long-term secret keys. The initialization process is shown in Fig. 3. The protocol adopts two types of pseudonyms. Long-term pseudonyms are used for network access and identity management, while temporary pseudonyms are used for communication within an LM area. The local access process is shown in Fig. 4. Temporary pseudonyms and session keys are updated using unused CRPs (Fig. 5), and long-term pseudonyms are renewed before expiration (Fig. 6). Security is analyzed under the Dolev–Yao model using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, ProVerif formal verification, and informal security analysis. Results and Discussions The proposed protocol combines PUF-based key generation with dynamic pseudonym management. First, FLAM-PUF uses response feedback and a reconfigurable LFSR to hide the internal CRP relationship, increasing the difficulty of machine-learning modeling attacks (Fig. 1). Second, the use of long-term and temporary pseudonyms separates network access from local vehicle communication. CRPs, pseudonyms, and session keys are updated synchronously, reducing the possibility that attackers associate vehicle identities across different authentication periods (Fig. 4, Fig. 5, and Fig. 6). BAN logic analysis shows that the vehicle can verify the binding between the temporary pseudonym and the PUF-based session key, while the LM can verify that this binding is authorized by the CM. ProVerif verification results show that the secrecy queries for vehicle identities and PUF responses are satisfied, and all three injective authentication correspondences hold. Under the assumed freshness and one-time CRP usage conditions, the results support the protocol's resistance to replay and impersonation attacks. Informal security analysis demonstrates that the protocol provides mutual authentication, anonymity, traceability, revocability, and protocol-level identity unlinkability. It also resists replay, impersonation, man-in-the-middle, and false message attacks (Table 3). In addition, the OBU does not need to store long-term secret keys in nonvolatile memory because the required PUF responses can be recovered when needed, reducing the risk of direct key extraction. For performance evaluation, the execution times of the main cryptographic operations are measured (Table 4), and the computation costs of the OBU, CM, and LM at each protocol stage are summarized in Table 5. For one complete online authentication and session key agreement process, the computation time of the proposed scheme on the OBU is approximately 1 365.99 ms, and the communication cost is 992 bits (Table 6). Under the same evaluation conditions, its computation time is close to that of Ref. [14] and lower than those of Refs. [15]–[17]. Its communication cost is lower than those of all four compared schemes. These results demonstrate that the proposed protocol provides more security functions while maintaining low vehicle-side costs. Conclusions This paper proposes a PUF-driven secure anonymous authentication protocol for IoV. FLAM-PUF is used as a hardware root of trust to recover authentication parameters and session key data when needed, avoiding direct storage of long-term secret keys in OBUs. The combination of long-term and temporary pseudonyms supports anonymous access, identity tracing, revocation, and protocol-level identity unlinkability. BAN logic, ProVerif formal verification, and informal security analysis show that the proposed protocol satisfies its main security requirements and resists common network attacks. Performance evaluation results show that one online authentication and session key agreement process requires approximately 1 365.99 ms of OBU computation and 992 bits of communication (Table 6). The proposed protocol achieves a balance among security, privacy protection, and low computational cost, making it suitable for resource-constrained IoV devices.
- Physical Unclonable Function(PUF),
- Internet of Vehicles (IoV),
- Anonymous authentication,
- Pseudonym mechanism,
- Lightweight security protocol

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References(22)

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