International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, Vol. x, No. x, 2013 1

Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A Study into the

Economic and the Legal implications

Patrice Seuwou*, Dilip Patel, George Ubakanma

Centre for Information Systems and Management

Department of Informatics,

London South Bank University,

London SE1 OAA

{seuwoup, dilip, ubakang}@lsbu.ac.uk

*Corresponding author

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an important component of the Intelligent

Transportation System. In this context, vehicle are equipped with complex

systems and advanced technologies such as communication systems, computing

platform with numerous processors, artificial intelligence and automatic control.

This emerging technology is attracting more and more attention as it is a

combination of multiple academic subjects and the latest technologies

representing the developing tendency of future automobile technology. The main

benefit of VANET communication is seen in active safety systems that increase

passenger safety by exchanging life critical warning messages between vehicles.

In this paper, we discuss the background of VANETs, its application and the

current security issues, furthermore we study a number of key elements related to

the economic and legal aspects to be considered before VANET can be

successfully deployed.

Keywords: Vehicular ad hoc network, application, security, economic, legal.

1. Introduction

In today’s world, road traffic activities play a very important role in everyday

life. In order to continuously improve safety and efficiency of the transportation

systems, to provide innovative services relating to different modes of transport

and traffic management and to enable drivers to be better informed and make

more coordinated and safer decisions on the road, Intelligent Transportation

Systems (ITS) have been deployed. In various national plans, Vehicular Ad hoc

Network also known as VANET is recognised as an important component of ITS

(US DOT, 2013) and could be a solution to decrease the number of accident on

the road. Indeed, despite the introduction of seat belts, airbags and anti-lock

braking system (ABS), there are still many people who die because of road

accidents. According to the Annual statistical report 2010 published by the

European Road Safety Observatory, Road traffic accidents in the Members States

of the European Union annually claim about 35.000 lives and leave more than

1.6 million people injured (ERSO, 2010). VANET is an emerging technology,

also a subset of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) that uses moving cars as

nodes in a network to create mobile networks, meaning that every node can move

freely within the network coverage and stay connected with each other. In this

type of network, nodes could be vehicles or Road Side Units (RSU) and they can

communicate with other nodes in single hop or multi hop. However VANET is

differentiated from MANET by many aspects such as dynamic topology changes

and high mobility of the nodes (De Fuentes and González-Tablas, 2011).

The network Vehicle was a new technology initiative by Delphi Delco

Electronics Systems and its partners (IBM, Netscape Communications and Sun

Microsystems) their aim was to offer more productivity tools, safety,

convenience and entertainment to millions of drivers. It was designed to

demonstrate how technology could be used to enhance vehicles. The Network

Vehicle made its debut at COMDEX ’97 and has since directed the attention of

today research efforts (Lind et al, 1998). Integrating a network interface, GPS

receiver, different sensors and on-board computer provide the opportunity to

design a powerful car-safety system able to gather, to process and distribute

information. In regards to the application in VANETs, they have been

categorised into safety-related and comfort-related (commercial) applications

(Jakubiak and Koucheryavy 2008). VANET offers several benefits to

organisations of any size. While such a network does pose certain safety

concerns (for example, one cannot safely type an email while driving), this does

not limit VANET’s potential as a productivity tool.

The main contributions of this paper are as followed: (1) we provide a ground for

the economic aspect to be considered for a successful VANET deployment, (2)

we identify a number of pieces of UK legislation that will need to be updated

with the introduction and the full implementation of this new technology.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In section 2 we provide a

background of VANET, in section 3 VANET Applications are discussed. In

section 4 we focus on the security issues and challenges in VANET. In section 5,

we look at the economic implications of VANET and in section 6 the legal

implications. Our concluding remarks and future work are presented in section 7

of the paper.

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

2. Background of VANET

Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) is regarded as the first commercial version

of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) as well as one of the most promising

MANET application scenarios (Schoch et al., 2006; Zhang, 2010). MANETs are

formed without any central administration and consist of mobile nodes that use a

wireless interface to send packet data. The roots of ad hoc networking could be

traced back as far as 1968 (Frodigh et al., 2000) with some early applications

such as the DARPA Packet Radio Network (PRNet) project in 1972 developed

by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was predicted

that in the near future, most new vehicles will be equipped with short-range

radios capable of communicating with other vehicles or with highway

infrastructure at distances of at least one kilometre (Parno and Perrig, 2005).

Vehicles will require an authority to oversee and to govern these

communications. Multiple ad-hoc networking technologies such as WiFi IEEE

802.11 b/g, WiMAX IEEE 802.16, Bluetooth. IRA, ZigBee are integrated in

VANET to allow an easy, effective, accurate and simple communication amongst

vehicles on dynamic mobility (Singh et al, 2011). Therefore a VANET could be

defined as communication network composed of vehicles (cars, buses, trucks and

so on) and road side base stations. It is a network that enables communications

between vehicles and RSUs, and the RSUs can be connected to a backbone

network (Qian and Moayeri, 2008). This communication is Ad hoc, meaning that

each connected node can move freely, no wires required and the routers used in

this context are called Road Side Units (RSU). Each vehicle will be equipped

with an On-board unit (OBU) allowing connection of the vehicle with (RSU) via

dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) radios. Furthermore, a Tamper

Proof Device (TPD) holding all critical information about the vehicle such as

vehicle secrets, trip details, drivers identity, speed and position will also be

involved in that communication. OBUs are allowed to talk to other OBUs and the

road-side infrastructure formed by road-side units (RSUs). The OBUs and RSUs

are equipped with on-board sensory, processing, and wireless communication

modules, forming a self-organised network allowing many other network

applications and services, including Internet access to be provided to vehicles.

Figure 1 shows a graphical depiction of a VANET identifying different types of

communications including both vehicle-to-vehicle communications (V2V) and

vehicle-to-roadside communications (V2R).

Figure 1 An example of a VANET

In the recent years, several projects have been launched in Europe, US and Japan

with the unique goal of realising the dream of networking car and a successful

implementation of vehicular networks. Numerous projects held in Europe,

Joining partners from the industry, governmental agencies and academia. Topics

covered within these activities include hazard warnings triggered by hazard

flashers, elaborated within Inter-Vehicle Hazard Warning project (IVHW);

cooperative driving addressed in CarTALK 2000, PROMOTE-Chauffeur and

INVENT VLA projects and driver information and warning issues addressed by

PReVENT WILLWARN, SAFESPOT and FleetNET. The Car2Car

Communication Consortium, a non-profit industry driven organisation initiated

by European car manufacturers in 2004 and supported by equipment suppliers,

research organisations and other partners. Its goal is to create a European

industrial standard for car-to-car communications extend across all brands (C2C

CC, 2013). FleetNet was a program which ran from 2000 to 2003, their research

was dominated by efforts to standardise MANET protocols, focusing on the

network layer (Fussler et al, 2007). Furthermore, we have the project Network

On Wheels (NOW) a German research project initiated in 2004 and funded by

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

the German government with the main partners including academia, automotive

and IT industries which adopts an IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless access

adapted to European market, with their main objectives to solve technical issues

related to communication protocols and data security for car-to-car

communications (Abdalla, and Senouci, 2007). The radio used for the

communication is Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC). In 1999, the

United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the USA allocated

75MHz of spectrum in the 5.9GHz band for DSRC to be used by Intelligent

Transportation Systems (ITS). Also, in Europe in August 2008 the European

Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has allocated 30 MHz of

spectrum in the 5.9GHz band for ITS. Although the IEEE 802.11 standards

family was initially developed for the use of laptops and PDAs in hot-spots, it is

relatively easily converted for vehicular use, moving to a different, licensed

frequency band, common for all participating countries. Despite the amount of

publication done in this area, economical, legal and institutional issues remain

unresolved. After they are dealt with, the deployment phase would start

(Jakubiak and Koucheryavy, 2008).

3. VANET Applications

Driving is a skill that requires full attention to safely control the vehicle and

respond to events happening on the road ahead. Distraction occurs when the

driver focus moves from the road to other activities. In order to maintain the

driver awareness of his/her environment and decrease the number of accident on

the road, the fast deployment of VANET enabled technologies become a

necessity. The main purpose of VANET was to provide ubiquitous connectivity

while on the road to mobile users, who are otherwise connected to the outside

world through other networks (Wang and Li, 2009). Integrating a network

interface, GPS receiver, different sensors and on-board computer gives the

opportunity to build powerful car-safety system, able of gathering, processing

and distributing high volume of information (Jakubiak and Koucheryavy, 2008).

A vehicular network model normally consists of three layers: data traffic,

vehicular traffic, and road network. While the first two are dynamic, the last is

naturally fixed. Communications between nodes can be either single-hop or

multi-hop and RSUs are assumed to be connected with each other. Researchers

are currently working on VANET technologies to make transportation systems

more intelligent so they can provide drivers with crucial information like traffic

congestion, road closures, weather conditions, their current position and other

data on the surrounding traffic. The movement of vehicles is very fast and

vehicles act as transceivers. They send and receive signals simultaneously

creating an extremely dynamic network which changes continuously.

Furthermore, the concentration of vehicles varies from point to point and also

depends of the time of day. For instance, the density might decrease at night and

increase during peak commuting hours.

ITS in many sources include the integration of advanced communication

technologies into the traffic infrastructure as a means to improve driving safety,

efficiency and awareness. Thus, ITS is more focused on the upgrade of

infrastructure, and the potential applications supported by the upgraded

infrastructures while VANETs are generally more autonomous, allowing

individual vehicles to interact and function. Each vehicle can take the role of a

sender, receiver, and router to broadcast information to the vehicular network or

transportation agency, which then uses the information to ensure safe, free-flow

of traffic. For communication to occur between vehicles and Road Side Units

(RSUs), vehicles must be equipped with a radio interface or On Board Unit

(OBU) that enables short-range wireless ad hoc networks to be formed. Vehicles

must also be fitted with hardware that permits detailed position information such

as a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. Figure 2 shows a graphical

depiction of a Vehicular Ad hoc network. The unloading vehicle blocks a route

and the surrounding vehicles can adopt alternative routes to avoid disruption.

Figure 2 A graphical depiction of a Vehicular Ad hoc NETwork (VANET). The

unloading vehicle blocks a route and the surrounding vehicles can adopt alternative

routes to avoid disruption. (Image Extracted from CAR 2 CAR Communication

Consortium at www.car-to-car.org/).

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

In practice, a good system design depends on understanding the applications that

will be carried in the network. These applications exhibit different

communication patterns such as one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many and

also have diverse requirements such as bandwidth, delay, security and reliability.

VANET enable systems will support a number of applications including Traffic

Signal, Vision Enhancement, Weather Conditions, Safety and Entertainment.

Safety Warning Applications, Life-Critical Safety Applications, Electronic Toll

Collection, Internet Access, Group Communications, and Road side Service

Finder. Most of these applications are proposed by vehicle manufacturers and can

be divided into two major categories which are safety-related applications and

comfort-related applications (commercial) (Raya and Hubaux, 2007).

3.1 Safety-related applications

Safety-related applications such as Collision Avoidance, Cooperative Driving

may prevent life-endangering accidents. Signals transmitted from a roadside base

station to a vehicle could warn a driver on potential danger while entering an

intersection. Communication between vehicles and communication between

vehicles and the roadsides can save many lives and prevent injuries. Therefore

the security of this category is mandatory, since the proper operation of any of

these applications should be guaranteed even in the presence of attackers.

Jakubiak and Koucheryavy (2008) have grouped safety-related applications in

three main classes which are assistance (navigation, cooperative collision

avoidance and lane-changing), information (speed limit or work zone info) and

warning (post-crash, obstacle or road condition warnings). VANETs are believed

to improve traffic safety and transportation management while lowering costs.

Various safety and traffic information, including road hazard, accident

notification and collision avoidance can be shared via VANETs. Most

information in VANET applications has real-time requirements, such as end-to-

end delay. For instance, a succession crash could be avoided if the message delay

is less than 0.1 seconds, while a delay of 0.4 seconds is not sufficient. In

Dedicated short-Range Communications (DSRC), the end-to-end delay for

critical applications is required to be within 1 second, or even less, within 100ms.

However, the delay of 802.11p, which is part of the VANET protocol stack, is

usually over 1 second. Many VANET applications have either delay constraints

or other Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. A solution to provide Quality of

Service (QoS) and reliability in VANET routing is still a challenging problem.

For instance, when a brake event happens, the message should be transferred and

should arrive in a certain time to avoid an accident (Li and Chigan, 2010). These

types of signals are life critical therefore demand direct communication due to

their delay-critical nature.

3.2 Non Safety-related applications (Comfort-related)

The purpose of these applications is to improve passenger comfort and traffic

efficiency. Applications in this category will include weather information, instant

messaging, online games, and internet access allowing passengers on board the

vehicle to have access to internet services. Furthermore, some business will be

able to advertise their products using the technology. But is important that non

safety-related application do not interfere with safety-related application

therefore possible solutions may be to use separate physical channel for each

category of signal or to prioritise the safety-related signals.

4. Security Analysis

In order for VANETs to become a real technology that can be deployed and

guarantee public safety, there is a need for an appropriate security architecture

that will protect them from different types of security attacks. In this section, we

are going to identify possible attacks that could be perpetrated again VANET

system. Furthermore, we will discuss different dimension of attackers and

identify the security requirements for this type of network.

4.1 Possible Attacks

The security of VANETs is vital, as the reason of their very existence relates to

significant life threatening situations. But due to the nature of open wireless

transmission mediums used in VANET, there are high numbers of attacks that

can be mounted against VANET systems. Here we elaborate some of these

attacks.

• Malware: This type of attack (including Viruses and worms) is more likely to

be carried out by insiders rather than outsiders and can be injected into the

network when the On Board Units (OBU) and Road Side Units (RSU) are

performing software updates.

• Spamming: Due to the lack of infrastructure and the decentralised nature of

VANETs, spam messages are difficult to control. Their very existence within the

network increases the possibility of transmission delay, thus affecting the real-

time guarantee requirement.

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

• Denial of Service (DoS) Attack: Overloads the communication channels and

make the network unavailable for authentic users. These attacks can be carried

out internally or externally using techniques such as flooding and jamming.

• Black Hole Attack: This form of attack takes place when an invader refuses to

play its part in the network, by dropping out signals after an established

communication, leading to a failure of message propagation.

• Broadcast Tampering: An attacker may inject false safety messages into the

network. This type of attack can be carried out internally or externally. It allows

the suppression of critical warning messages resulting in accidents.

• Replay Attack: In this attack, a previously received signal is re-injected back

into the network at a later time or in a different location.

• Position Faking: Attackers may diffuse false information in the network to

affect the behaviour of other drivers. Reliable and accurate reporting of vehicle

position information must be guaranteed. Vehicles are exclusively responsible for

providing their location information and impersonation must be intolerable.

Unsecured communication can allow attackers to modify or falsify their own

position information to other vehicles, create additional vehicle identifiers (also

known as a Sybil Attack) or block vehicles from receiving vital safety messages.

• Global Positioning System (GPS) Spoofing: Attackers may fool vehicles into

thinking that they are in a different location. This is done by using GPS satellite

simulator generating signals by producing false readings in the GPS positioning

system devices. This is possible through the use of a GPS satellite simulator

generating signals stronger than those produced by the genuine satellite. The GPS

satellite maintains a location table with the identity of all vehicles on the network

and their geographic location.

• Masquerading: An attacker actively pretends to be another vehicle by posing

as a legitimate vehicle in the network using false identities and can be motivated

by rational or malicious objectives. They are then able to launch a multiplicity of

attacks including production of false messages or the formation of black holes.

• Sybil Attack: This occurs when the attacker uses different identities at the same

time and pretends to be multiple vehicles concurrently. Networks are especially

vulnerable if each vehicle holds multiple keys.

• Certificate Replication/ Key management: Certification Authorities (CA)

will be responsible for issuing key certificates to vehicles. An attacker could

undermine the system by duplicating a vehicle’s identity across several other

vehicles. The objective of such an attack would be to confuse authorities and

prevent identification of vehicles in hit-and-run events. Advantages of using a

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for VANET are accompanied by some

challenging problems, notably certificate revocation.

• Message Tampering/Manipulation: An attacker may inject forged or

fabricated messages and is able to suppress or alter transmitter messages. In this

case an attacker either physically disables inter-vehicle communication or

changes the application to prevent it from sending to, or responding from

application beacons. In general, an attacker can modify packet information

including vehicle status, location, emergency braking and other special events. A

threat to authenticity can result from an attacker modifying the messages

exchanged in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-roadside unit (V2I)

communication.

• Tunnelling: Due to the fact that GPS signals disappear temporarily when

vehicles enter a tunnel, attackers may exploit this momentary loss of positioning

information by injecting false data once vehicles are out of the tunnel and before

reception of updated location information.

4.2 Attackers

Attacker create problem in the network by getting full access of communication

medium DSRC. Raya and Hubaux (2007) classify attackers as having four

dimensions: “Insider versus Outsider”, “Malicious versus Rational”, “Active

versus Passive” and “Local versus Extended”. The ideal solution should allow

drivers to distinguish genuine members of the network from malicious

individuals, by determining the liability of each driver while maintaining their

privacy. The inspiration behind VANET was to merge various disciplines

involving engineers, computer scientists, psychologists, legislators and many

others professionals together with car manufacturers, in order to make driving

more secure and comfortable. Attackers have their own role in this network and

predicting their dynamic behaviour is difficult. If an attacker works on safety

applications and changes the content of safety messages then it will create very

difficult situations on the road where many users may be affected. For example,

an attacker can selectively dropping packets from the network, these packets may

hold critical information for the receiver, the attacker suppress these packets and

can use them again in other time. The purpose of such an attacker may be to

prevent registration and insurance authorities from learning about collisions

involving his vehicle or to avoid delivering collision reports to roadside access

points. An advantage of VANETs over the more common ad hoc network is that

they provide sufficient computational and power resources. Indeed a typical

vehicle may possibly host numerous microprocessors.

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

4.3 Security requirement

Security is amongst the essential user’s requirement in VANET and it will be

difficult to convince drivers to use this new technology unless it is made secure at

an acceptable level. The problem at hand is to secure the operation of VANET

systems by designing protocols that mitigate attacks and thwart deviations from

the implemented protocols to the greatest possible extent. This section includes

some of the basic security requirements for VANET systems based on

application needs as discussed in Seuwou et al (2013).

Authentication: Authentication is the core security requirement in

VANET. Vehicles reactions to events should be based on legitimate

messages. This service is concerned with assuring that the origin of a

message is correctly identified.

Integrity: This is a service assuring that system assets and information

transmitted over the network cannot be altered by unauthorised parties.

Indeed these modifications may include writing, changing, changing the

status, deleting or injecting transmitted messages. Therefore it is

important to highlight that integrity is related to active attacks as well as

technical errors.

Confidentiality (sometimes misleadingly called privacy): In VANET,

vehicles send and receive safety as well as non-safety messages from

either vehicle to vehicle (V2V) or vehicle to infrastructure (V2I). This

service ensures that the transported information is kept secret from all

unauthorised parties and cannot be eavesdropped on its way between the

sender and the receiver.

Privacy: Privacy is an important factor for the public’s acceptance and

successful deployment of VANETs as people are increasingly concerned

about Big Brother enabling technologies. In vehicle context, it is

achieved when two related goals are satisfied (untraceability and

unlinkability). This service ensures the user is able to maintain control of

personal data and his/her location. This service also secures other

information related to the vehicle such as identity of the driver, the

driving behaviour, Electronic License Plate (ELP), speed of the vehicle,

internal car sensor data, the past and present location of the vehicle from

unauthorised parties. Therefore privacy can be of various types:

o User Data Privacy

o Location Privacy

o Route Privacy

Availability: This service requires every node to be able to send

information at any time. As mentioned above, the main purpose of

VANET was to serve users by making driving more secure and

comfortable. For that reason, if the network is not available for

communication, then VANET becomes useless. Vehicular networks

must be available at all times, as many applications require real-time

communications with fast response times. Any delay, even a few

milliseconds may make a specific message become meaningless. This

may lead to terrible accidents or much bigger disasters.

Access control: This service provides users with the ability to restrict

access to resources reserved for privileged entities. Access control

policies can be implemented on Road Side Units (RSU) allowing limited

access to other vehicles infrastructure and application data through

communication channels.

Non-repudiation: This requirement is also called auditability (Kargl et

al, 2006). This service prevents the server or receiver from denying

receipt of a transmitted message. Moreover, senders and receivers can

prove that a particular message has been received or sent.

5. Economic implications of VANET deployment

In the near future, vehicles are expected to be equipped with VANET

technologies although it is likely to take a considerable time before all vehicles

are fully VANET enabled (Weimerskirch et al, 2010). The costs for software and

electronics are estimated to approach the 50% margin level in car manufacturing

in 2015. Furthermore amongst the total number of vehicle innovations today, it is

estimated that 90% are all centred on information technology software and

hardware.

There are two mechanisms that lead to a successful market introduction for

customer technologies:

A visible added value of the technology for the customer

A regulative order that does not leave alternatives requires its use.

Indeed research shows that VANET is a necessity. Therefore, as a means of

accelerating the process of VANET market penetration, collaboration among

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

automotive manufacturers, government agencies, legal authorities and other third

parties must be elaborated. In the USA alone, around 7 million vehicles are sold

per year in a total number of about 243 millions. There will be a need of

supporting infrastructure made available in the form of roadside units (RSUs). It

was estimated that in order to make the network usable, penetration of at least

10% is needed. Provided that 50% of all newly produced vehicles are VANET

enabled, reaching the 10% should take an average of 3 years (Jakubiak and

Koucheryavy, 2008). The cost of security solutions is critical in any IT system.

The risk involved in vehicular networks can be much larger than the risk in

conventional computing world. The hacking of an automotive safety-critical

application system can have far more impact due the life threatening aspect of the

problem to be considered. A possible scenario may be a VANET safety

application successfully compromised by one or more threats of conventional IT

systems such as hacking, phishing, pharming, etc… these security gaps may

create disastrous effects in a VANET context.

There is another cost issue related to various electronic components such as the

Event Data Recorder (EDR) which is an extra security system, a logging

mechanism to track and record events in an accident, similar to the idea of black

box in an airplane. Figure 3 show a smart vehicle with various technologies

which will be imbedded in future cars. This emerging technology is being

introduced slowly into society with equipment such as The Global Positioning

System (GPS) which is a space-based satellite navigation system that provides

location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, the

Forward and Rear radar systems.

Figure 3 A Smart vehicle’s onboard instrumentation. The computing platform

supervises protocol execution, including those related to security. The

communication facility supports wireless data exchange with other vehicles or

fixed stations (Source: Hubaux, Capkun and Luo, 2004).

EDR is a non-volatile tamper-proof storage hardware system used to record all

the emergency-related information received through the VANET, including

speed data, time, vehicle location, acceleration data and so on. Data will be

stored in the Event Data Recorder (EDR) but there will also be equipment called

a Tamper-Proof Device (TPD) generating and receiving encrypted messages to

be stored in EDR. If someone tries to open a TPD by brute-force, there will be a

security measure allowing all the stored keys in it to be erased to prevent them

from being compromised; Similar to the Cryptex in The Da Vinci Code

(Stampoulis and Chai, 2007). Indeed all of the above equipment will be

introduced with their various economic implications. Generally speaking, due to

the familiar threats of conventional IT systems such as hacking, phishing,

pharming…, there is an understanding of security in the computing world by

end-users who are willing to invest in security solutions (firewall and anti-virus

software …). On the other hand, there is little willingness by vehicle buyers to

spend a lot on security. Research shows that the main challenge in providing

security in VANET depends on privacy, trust, cost and gradual deployment.

Therefore, it is crucial for any security solutions to be mainly cost effective.

Despite all the economic problems related to VANET deployment, there is the

potential to successfully introduce the technology into the market as long as there

is cooperation among key parties.

6. Legal implication of VANET deployment

As society changes, its goals and values also change. It is believed that

advancements in technology are not always closely followed by lawmakers as

attackers are continuously looking for ways to escape the juridical system.

Balancing privacy concerns with security needs will require codifying legal,

societal and practical considerations. Most countries have widely divergent laws

concerning their citizens’ right to privacy (Parno and Perrig, 2005). In today’s

world, most car manufacturers operate at an international level in multinational

markets, therefore they will required security solutions able to satisfy the most

severe laws or that can be customised to meet their legal obligations. There are a

number of pieces of UK legislation that may be relevant to information security

in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks. These may include the Telecommunications

Regulations 2003; the Companies Act 2006; the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988; the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (as updated by the Police and Justice

Act 2006); the Data Protection Act 1998; the Human Rights Act 1998; the

Electronic Communications Act 2000; the Regulation of Investigatory Powers

Act 2000; the Freedom of Information Act 2000; and the software licensing

regulations (Calder and Watkins, 2010).

The legal aspects of VANET are related to the over-lapping areas of law and

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). Existing transportation law must be

changed or be readapted to reflect developments in the transportation industry

Vehicular Ad hoc Network Applications and Security: A study into the Economic and the

Legal Implications

due to the synergy of various academic disciplines and professionals, combined

with the exponential growth of information technology. Information technology

law (IT law) should not be confused with the IT aspects of law although there is

an overlap between the two concepts. There is a set of legal requirement

currently in existence in several countries, which governs the transportation.

These laws differ depending on the country. Cyber law or Internet law is a term

that encapsulates the legal issues related to use of the Internet.

Criminals, military, government and the public listen in on conversations, as well

as Law enforcement agencies, but they do it legally. The Electronic

Communications Privacy Act grants law enforcement agencies the right to tap

phones if they can prove to a judge that they have probable cause. This may be

due to an illegal activity, a matter of life or death, in order to enforce a law or to

gain evidence on a criminal element. The courts normally limit the monitoring to

a specific legal duration (Nichols and Lekkas, 2002). In the future, when VANET

technologies will be completely deployed, this law will be amended to

incorporate the changes in the technology.

There are negative implications associated with distracted driving—especially in

conjunction with a crash. Survey research shows that self-reporting of negative

behaviour is lower than actual occurrence of that negative behaviour. There is no

reason to believe that self-reporting of distracted driving to a law enforcement

officer would differ. The inference herein is that the reported driver distraction

during crashes is lower than the actual occurrence (U.S. Department of

Transportation, 2010).

If a driver fatality occurs in the crash, law enforcement must rely on the crash

investigation in order to report on whether driver distraction was involved. Law

enforcement may not have information to indicate distraction. These

investigations may rely on witness account and oftentimes these accounts may

not be available either (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2010).

Through the ability to digitise any form of information, technology is changing

everything. Boundaries between the various forms of surveillance are

disappearing with the application of information technology linking surveillance

techniques into a near seamless web of surveillance. Developments in data

processing suggest that the distinction between informational and physical

privacy is becoming more and more flimsy. Law is a vital institution through

which society achieves its goals (Boyd et al., 1966). Traffic Law System (TLS) is

an important concept in the intelligent transportation system. Legislative

requirements might force VANET to provide strong security and privacy

solutions. Notions of privacy have evolved and changed over time. The classic

definition of the concept is that it consists of the ‘right to let alone’. In terms of

isolation from the scrutiny of others, the average individual living in town or city

enjoys vastly more personal privacy than did our ancestors living in small

villages where every action was known to and a source of comment for

neighbours. The right to privacy receives a measure of recognition in the

European Convention on Human Rights which provides that ‘Everyone has the

right to respect for their private, family life, their home and correspondence’. To

a greater extent than with other basic human rights, the right to privacy must be

subject to considerable qualification and, as epitomised in the on-going debate

concerning the allegedly intrusive nature of media activities. The right to privacy

has to be balanced against a basket of other rights (Lloyd, 1997, p.28).

As transportation systems develop, many new legal policy issues for which there

is now little or inexistent precedent arises. Legislators may be required to

generate laws prohibiting the activities presumed to be causing Highway

Transportation System dysfunctions, finding ways to reinforce these laws. An

official determination of guilt for those accused of not complying with the laws,

an imposition of legal sanctions against those found guilty of disobeying the laws

is required. Deployment of VANETs will create many novel and challenging

problems for the transportation lawyer. It will require the development of new

ideas and new approaches to accomplish new goals for our transportation system.

7. Conclusion and Future works

Vehicular ad hoc network is an emerging area in the field of networking still in

need of more solutions and proposals. In this paper, we gave an overview of the

technologies including the standard and the spectrum frequency allocation; we

investigate its applications and identify the security issues related to the

introduction of this emerging technology. Moreover, we have discussed the

economic and legal implications of VANET market penetration. These issues

remain unresolved and show that VANET deployment will start only after they

are dealt with. The system could become fully functional within few years with

sufficient roadside infrastructure built only if car manufacturers, governmental

agencies, legislators, transportation authorities and other third parties decide to

work together to improve road safety and make driving more enjoyable. Future

work may be to explore ethical implications of VANET implementation.

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