VANET privacy by “defending and attacking”

A major concern regarding Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) is the protection of the participants´ privacy. Through the frequent transmission of beacons containing pseudonyms and telematic data like speed, acceleration and location of the vehicles, attackers are able to track VANET users. To address this problem, several privacy concepts have been proposed in the past to protect the participants. These concepts often work with a single centralized provider, require radio silence or are restricted to defense only. This can lead to weak protection or to major restrictions of VANET functionality. In this paper we propose the concept of “Defending and Attacking” to overcome these issues.