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

TL;DR

QSAFE-V addresses the need for quantum-secure, low-overhead authentication in vehicular tactile networks by integrating QKD with lattice-based post-quantum cryptography and QIT tokens. It provides formal semantic-security proofs under an extended Real-Or-Random model and an enhanced non-formal analysis, demonstrating resilience to replay, MITM, impersonation, and offline credential-guessing attacks while preserving forward/backward secrecy. The results, including QISKIT-based simulations, indicate that QSAFE-V achieves strong security with overhead comparable to classical schemes, enabling URLLC-ready secure swarm coordination. This work advances practical quantum-resilient authentication for edge-enabled vehicles and lays groundwork for future quantum-aware threat detection and testbed validation.

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.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: QSAFE-V system model
• Figure 2: Flowchart of the algorithm.
• Figure 3: Mutual Authentication and Key establishment for QSAFE-V.
• Figure 4: (a) and (b) Replay attacks with dynamic variations in QIT and timestamps.
• Figure 5: MITM attack resistance under QIT authentication.