The impact of malicious nodes positioning on vehicular alert messaging system

ICT components of vehicular and transportation systems have a crucial role in ensuring passengers’ safety, particularly in the scenario of vehicular networks. Hence, security concerns should not be overlooked, since a malicious vehicle might inject false information into the intervehicle wireless links, leading to life and money losses. This is even more critical when considering applications specifically aimed at improving people’s safety, such as accident warning systems. To assess the scenario of such type of applications in a vehicular network, we have performed a thorough evaluation of accident warning systems under a position cheating attack. As one of the main contributions of this paper, we determine the impact of a different number of malicious vehicles on delaying the alert warning messages. In particular, we study the impact of the position of malicious vehicles on delaying alert messages. We identify the most effective strategies that could be used by malicious vehicles in order to maximize the delay of the alert message, and thus strengthen the impact of the attacker. Finally, we pinpoint that even with a small number of malicious vehicles, the positioning cheating attack can significantly increase the delay of the alert message when compared to a scenario without attack.