The technology of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has evolved and contributed to improving road safety and traffic efficiency in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). ITS applications are dependent on a communication network formed between AVs and UAVs suffer from security and privacy issues owing to vulnerable wireless communication channels. Considering these issues, SP2AP, a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-based efficient and reliable privacy-preserving authentication protocol for secure UAV-UAV communications in IoT systems is presented in this paper. The proposed protocol not only offers anonymity and untraceability features but also mitigates UAV capture attacks. A robust informal security analysis confirms that the SP2AP protocol safeguards against various known security attacks, such as masquerade, Man-In- The-Middle (MITM), Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL), replay, node tampering, cloning, etc. The proposed protocol offers other security features, including mutual authentication, secure key agreement, no clock synchronization, user anonymity, untraceability, (for/back)ward secrecy, property, and drone-to-drone direct authentication. The formal security proof is performed using the Real-OR-Random (ROR) model, and the Scyther tool also demonstrates that the SP2AP protocol is more robust in terms of security and privacy. Performance analysis evaluates computation and communication costs, which show better superiority compared to similar existing protocols.

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) authentication is essential in the Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET). V2V communication improves the safety of drivers and assists them in making the appropriate decision according to road conditions. Since V2V communication happens in open public channels, an adversary takes advantage of it and tries to launch several potential threats. This article designs a blockchain-assisted V2V communication and authentication scheme using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) called DBKE. In DBKE, vehicles perform their registration with their nearest Roadside Unit (RSU) without assisting the centralized cloud server. Then, one vehicle can communicate with another using the information stored in the blockchain. During the communication, both vehicles first perform the process of mutual authentication and then securely generate the session keys without sending the private parameters to the public channels. The formal analysis of DBKE is done with the Scyther and Real-or-Random (ROR) models, which confirm that the DBKE is robust and safe from attacks. Furthermore, the detailed comparative study of the security features reveals that the DBKE scheme provides superior security and low computation cost compared to the existing V2V authentication protocols.

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), modern Maritime Transportation Systems (MTS) have played a crucial role in the transport industry. The various potential privacy and security concerns (such as vessels’ location tracking, message tampering, unauthorized access to data, etc.) have increased substantially in IoT-enabled MTS. Considering the above issues, we propose a secure, robust, and efficient authentication scheme for MTS based on Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) called PSAS-MTS. The proposed PSAS-MTS scheme not only monitors the vessel’s condition but also ensures protection against collisions in route management and provides safety to the vessel’s passengers. The scheme uses simple XOR, a cryptographic one-way hash, an ECC cryptosystem, and HMAC to achieve a high level of security in MTS. The formal security analysis is carried out using a well-known Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, which ensures the security harness features. A rigorous informal security analysis is also done, which ensures various privacy and security features such as mutual authentication, anonymity, forward and backward secrecy, etc. The proposed PSAS-MTS scheme resists various possible well-known active and passive security attacks. The performance analysis shows that the proposed PSAS-MTS scheme is more efficient in terms of computation and communication overheads when compared to other competitive schemes.

The intelligent vehicles collect and distribute the data to other vehicles and Roadside Units (RSU), which ultimately strengthens the vehicular services in the Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET). In order to protect against a variety of potential security threats, the VANET system needs a proper authentication mechanism, which requires more computational overheads and cannot perform better, when a cluster of vehicles sends the messages simultaneously. This paper aims to design a decentralized blockchain-based batch authentication protocol using Elliptic Curve Cryptography, where RSU authenticates the group of vehicles together. Moreover. our protocol also supports the verification of both individual messages (signature) generated by the vehicle and batch signature. We have used the Scyther security tool to verify our protocol and found that the protocol is safe and secure. A detailed comparative analysis reveals that the proposed scheme achieves more functionality and security compared to relevant schemes. The security analysis confirms that the proposed scheme is secure against all applicable attacks. Moreover, the ethereum platform simulates the proposed scheme, showing its effectiveness and confirming that it is feasible to deploy and execute transactions in real networks.

Industry 4.0 connects the latest technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of things (IoT), machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI), and blockchain to provide more automation in the industrial process and also bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds through the cyber-physical system. The inherent feature of IoT devices creates the industry to smart industry (referred to as industrial IoT, i.e., IIoT) through its data-driven decision policies. However, several challenges such as decentralization, security and privacy vulnerability, single point of failure (SPOF), and trust issues exist in the IoT system. Blockchain is one of the promising technologies that can bring about opportunities for addressing the challenges of IoT systems. In this article, we have investigated the integration of IoT with blockchain technology and provided an in-depth study of the blockchain-enabled IoT and IIoT systems. The state-of-the-art research is categorized into data storage and management technique, big data and cloud computing technique (finance and data auditing), and industrial sectors (supply chain, energy, and healthcare sector). The insightful discussion based on the different categories is also presented in the paper. In particular, first, we introduce the IoT and IIoT and then discuss the need for smart contracts in IoT and IIoT systems. Next, we concentrate on the convergence of blockchain and IoT with state-of-the-art research. In addition, this article also provides the open and future research directions towards this era with the highlighted observations.