Effective certificate distribution in ETSI ITS VANETs using implicit and explicit requests

Security and privacy of current Car-to-X systems heavily depends on the usage of pseudonym certificates. These carry the required information for authenticating messages received from other vehicles. However, only a limited amount of detailed studies about certificate distribution strategies in VANETs as well as attack surfaces of such systems has been proposed. Therefore, a general study about possible distribution mechanisms and their parametrization is provided in this work. Thereby, the management of entries in request lists is identified as a key issue for system performance. Additionally, a design flaw in the currently standardized ETSI ITS distribution scheme is outlined leading to the possibility of an attacker significantly increasing channel load on the safety critical control channel. A solution to this problem is suggested and an evaluation of its performance is provided. Furthermore, the evaluation shows the great influence of request list management on authentication delay and thus on security inducted packet loss.