A machine learning based scheme for enhancing the detection of position falsification attacks in vehicular ad hoc networks

Abstract Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are wireless networks established between vehicles and their surrounding infrastructure, enabling the exchange of information. Consequently, many applications that can enhance passengers’ safety and traffic flow are built upon this information. However, malicious nodes can manipulate the exchanged data to attack other nodes and disrupt the network’s normal behavior. For example, if an attacker broadcasts a falsified location for a vehicle, the functionality of applications that rely on accurate location sharing will be compromised, potentially leading to deadly accidents. Although numerous Misbehavior Detection Schemes (MDSs) have been proposed to detect position falsification attacks, their effectiveness remains limited for certain attack types, raising concerns given the safety-critical nature of VANET applications. This paper proposes a machine learning-based method for detecting position falsification attacks. The proposed approach evaluates four machine-learning algorithms using three feature vectors (FV1, FV2, and FV3) composed of selected and derived features extracted from Basic Safety Messages (BSMs), in addition to a novel confidence-based Received Signal Strength Indicator feature, termed RSSIConf. The RSSIConf feature assesses the reliability of a sender’s claimed position by comparing the measured RSSI with confidence intervals corresponding to the claimed sender–receiver distance. Experimental results show that the Random Forest classifier trained with FV2 features achieves the best overall performance, outperforming existing approaches with improvements ranging from 0.76% to 13.26% in accuracy and from 0.74% to 12.71% in F1-score across different position spoofing attack types. These improvements enhance the reliability of misbehavior detection and contribute to safer and more trustworthy VANET communications.