In the last decade, Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANET) have garnered significant interest and concern. VANETs allow vehicles on the road to communicate with each other and with the Internet, ensuring the safety and comfort of passengers. VANETs provide traffic and weather reports, collision prevention, and many more applications. However, VANETs have become an alluring target for cyber attacks. In this paper, we provide a survey on cyber attacks and protection solutions for VANETs. We begin by addressing various types of cyber attacks that can affect VANETs, and the security properties that they can compromise. We subsequently illustrate multiple protection solutions that have been proposed in response to these attacks, and the various security concerns they can help alleviate. We observe that the proposed solutions have the capability of addressing all areas of security concern in a VANET. However, this knowledge can assist attackers in creating new cyber threats that can circumvent current protection solutions. Hence, we finish off the paper by introducing some open research areas that can help further address cyber threats, and can assist in creating more robust security solutions to protect the next generation of VANETs.

REU Site: Collaborative Human-Robot Interaction for Robots in the Field, National Science Foundation PI: David Feil-Seifer, co-PI: Emily Hand, Amount: $405,000, March 1, 2022 - Feb. 28, 2025