Integrating Elliptic Curve Encryption and Post‐Quantum Cryptography for Secure VANETs Using Fog Computing and SDN

ABSTRACT Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a core component of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), enabling vehicle‐to‐vehicle (V2V) and vehicle‐to‐infrastructure (V2I) communication for safety, traffic control and infotainment services. However, the highly dynamic and resource‐constrained nature of VANETs exposes them to significant security threats, including emerging quantum‐enabled attacks. While elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is widely used due to its efficiency, it is vulnerable to quantum attacks through Shor's algorithm. In contrast, post‐quantum cryptography (PQC) offers quantum‐resistant security but introduces considerable computational and communication overhead, limiting its suitability for real‐time vehicular environments. This paper proposes a hybrid ECC–PQC security framework supported by fog computing and software‐defined networking (SDN) to balance efficiency and long‐term security. The architecture offloads cryptographic operations to fog nodes, employs SDN for adaptive traffic management and integrates trust‐aware hybrid encryption to defend against Sybil, replay and quantum‐based attacks. The framework is evaluated using OMNeT++ and Mininet‐SDN simulations, considering packet delivery ratio, end‐to‐end latency, computational overhead and security resilience. Results show that the hybrid approach reduces latency by 35% compared to PQC‐only schemes and improves packet delivery by 20% under black‐hole attack scenarios, demonstrating a practical and quantum‐resilient security solution for VANETs.