Internet of Vehicles Security Threats, Countermeasures, Open Challenges With Future Research Directions

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Safayat Bin Hakim, Muhammad Adil, Aitizaz Ali, Ahmed Farouk, Houbing Herbert Song

Published: 01 Jan 2025, Last Modified: 04 Nov 2025IEEE Internet of Things JournalEveryoneRevisionsCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is growing rapidly with the potential to revolutionize transportation systems. Considering the promising future and potential contributions of IoV’s technology, it has attracted the attention of researchers, industry stakeholders, and potential intruders. However, the IoV’s network topological infrastructure faces several connectivity and communication challenges, along with security issues that are beyond the scope of current literature. Although each aspect and challenge has its own consequences, this work focuses on Physical Layer Security (PhyLaySec) threats, which are the most devastating because they undermine the trust of all stakeholders associated with this technology. In the literature, this topic is bearly focused, which demonstrates that the existing PhyLaySec countermeasures would not be able to counter future security challenges in IoV in terms of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) authentication, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) authentication, vehicles-to-everything (V2X) authentication, etc., due to factors such as high vehicle mobility, dynamic network topologies, limited bandwidth, and ultra-fast communication. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a systematic review of state-of-the-art PhyLaySec techniques from 2017 to 2025, with a focus on their strengths and weaknesses. Through our review, we identify key open research questions that require further investigation to enhance the security of IoV’s technologies. Moreover, we highlight potential future research directions that aim to ensure the foolproof security of IoV technology with respect to underlined challenges. Finally, we acknowledge that this is the first paper to comprehensively address the topic of PhyLaySec of IoV technology, which makes it a valuable resource for researchers and professionals working in this field.