QSAFE-V: Quantum-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Protocol Design for Vehicular Tactile Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces QSAFE-V, a quantum-secured lightweight authentication protocol designed for vehicular networks in 6G-enabled Tactile Internet environments, enhancing security against quantum threats while maintaining low latency and high reliability.

Contribution

It presents a novel quantum-secured authentication framework tailored for vehicular networks, with formal security proofs and performance analysis demonstrating its effectiveness and efficiency.

Findings

QSAFE-V provides robust quantum and contextual attack protection.

The protocol achieves comparable communication and computation costs to classical schemes.

It is suitable for ultra-low latency, high reliability vehicular communication environments.

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of 6G technology, the Tactile Internet is emerging as a novel paradigm of interaction, particularly in intelligent transportation systems, where stringent demands for ultra-low latency and high reliability are prevalent. During the transmission and coordination of autonomous vehicles, malicious adversaries may attempt to compromise control commands or swarm behavior, posing severe threats to road safety and vehicular intelligence. Many existing authentication schemes claim to provide security against conventional attacks. However, recent developments in quantum computing have revealed critical vulnerabilities in these schemes, particularly under quantum-enabled adversarial models. In this context, the design of a quantum-secured, lightweight authentication scheme that is adaptable to vehicular mobility becomes essential. This paper proposes QSAFE-V, a quantum-secured authentication framework for edge-enabled vehicles that surpasses traditional security models. We conduct formal security proofs based on quantum key distribution and quantum adversary models, and also perform context-driven reauthentication analysis based on vehicular behavior. The output of quantum resilience evaluations indicates that QSAFE-V provides robust protection against quantum and contextual attacks. Furthermore, detailed performance analysis reveals that QSAFE-V achieves comparable communication and computation costs to classical schemes, while offering significantly stronger security guarantees under wireless Tactile Internet conditions.