Making Connected Cars Untraceable via DSRC Radios

Abstract

This article shows potential of using DSRC radios for vehicle tracking protection. We focus on traffic data collection as our target application where vehicles send their locations to a server while driving. Such vehicles are easily trackable-revealing location history-as the application often requires frequent and accurate location updates. This article presents PathCloak, a method that enables vehicles to report their locations while preventing the server from properly tracking the vehicles. PathCloak leverages vehicles' two network interfaces: in-car Internet (for accessing the server) and car-to-car DSRC (for creating path confusion). PathCloak-enabled vehicles exchange their kinematic information via DSRC radios, and use it to generate plausible path segments for each other, making their paths indistinguishable each other from the server's viewpoint. We demonstrate its feasibility via field experiments on real roads using our DSRC testbeds. Our evaluation shows that PathCloak offers strong privacy (tracking success ratio˂ 1%), while maintaining high utility for various traffic statistics.