Security Challenges in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks: Threat Mitigation Strategies

Abstract

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have become a critical component of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that have the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry. VANETs allow for vehicles to communicate with other vehicles and with roadside infrastructure to improve safety, traffic movement, and passenger comfort within the transportation industry. Despite the benefits that VANETs provide, their open communication protocols, dynamic topologies, and high-speed mobility patterns put the system at risk of various critical security threats. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities can have catastrophic consequences, including physical harm and loss of life. While existing literature surveys separate architectural concepts from mitigation mechanics, this paper fills a critical gap by providing an integrated, cross-layer taxonomy that directly maps architectural vulnerabilities and mobility dynamics to specific threat mitigation protocols, AI-driven intrusion detection frameworks, and decentralized blockchain infrastructures. This paper investigates the architecture of VANETs, establishes structural security requirements, classifies contemporary threats, and comprehensively surveys mitigation strategies. Furthermore, the technical limitations of these strategies, performance evaluation metrics, and open challenges that must be addressed in the future to improve the security of VANETs are systematically analyzed.