Simulation of attacks and corresponding driver behavior in vehicular ad hoc networks with VSimRTI

A malicious attack in which bogus information is distributed in a vehicular ad hoc network may have notably effect on the traffic efficiency. The reliability and trustworthiness of a VANET is very important, especially in the deployment phase. As long as the density of vehicles on the road, equipped with a VANET communication system, is relatively low, the introduction of bogus traffic information by attackers may have substantial impact due to the lack of vehicles that are able to disprove such faked information. As result, vehicle drivers may react corresponding to a displayed danger warning and therewith thwart the road traffic unnecessarily. We present possible ways to simulate stationary and moving attackers in order to show their effect on the traffic efficiency by considering appropriate driver behavior. In order to have realistic traffic and communication behavior, the simulation runtime infrastructure VSimRTI is used.