A Robust Framework for Sybil Attack Detection in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 10 Jun 2026] A Robust Framework for Sybil Attack Detection in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Md. Sadmin Tahmid Khan, Md. Saim Ahmmed Utsho, Mosarrat Jahan Sybil attacks create an illusion of traffic congestion by utilizing fake identities, which undermines the reliable and safe operation of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Existing detection mechanisms struggle to effectively handle Sybil attacks as they are (i) susceptible to high false positive rates (FPR) due to the overlapping trajectories of both Sybil and legitimate vehicles, (ii) not practical for real-world deployment due to manual calibrations with ground data, (iii) ineffective for sparse distribution of roadside units (RSUs) and vehicles as they depend heavily on the presence of both, and (iv) inefficient due to computational overheads. This paper addresses these shortcomings and proposes a robust framework to tackle these issues. The proposed scheme reduces the FPR by utilizing GPS location data, enabling the construction of more accurate and distinguishable trajectories. Besides, it employs DBSCAN clustering to identify Sybil vehicles, facilitating unsupervised parameter selection. GPS data eliminates the dependency on RSUs and vehicles, making this scheme effective in both sparse and dense regions. Additionally, the proposed scheme is lightweight and consistent across vehicles with heterogeneous capacities. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme reduces the FPR by approximately 68% in dense regions and 70% in sparse areas. Furthermore, it lowers the false negative rate (FNR) by 67% in the sparse region and achieves a competitive detection rate compared to the existing methods in both dense and sparse regions. Additionally, the proposed scheme decreases the detection time by almost 80% in dense regions and 43% in sparse ones. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2606.11667 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.11667v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.11667 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Mosarrat Jahan [view email] [v1] Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:20:56 UTC (2,542 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)