An efficient weak secrecy scheme for network coding data dissemination in VANET

Vehicular networks create a new communication paradigm that enables to exploit the movement of cars to disseminate content. If network coding is used, vehicles have much more flexibility in content sharing and the system stability and scalability are promoted also in presence of mobility. Along this line, we propose an efficient mechanism to provide secrecy of the information. Traditional approaches based on encryption decrease the cooperation willingness of intermediate nodes, which have no expectation of recovering the file. Our scheme is based on obfuscation by processing and polluting the original file so that only the intended recipients, informed of corrupted blocks, can recover the information timely. We present several alternatives to efficiently provide weak secrecy and to foster cooperation. We simulate the file distribution in a vehicular network and show that the proposed scheme enhances content distribution in term of downloading speed and it is much more efficient than the ones that use encryption.