Open Access

ARTICLE

Location Privacy Protection of Data Elements in ICVs: A Key Update Mechanism for Defending Against Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks

Lei Wang¹, Hongji Luo², Yong Heng², Jingnan Tang², Xiaochuan Ju², Jianwei An^1,*, Haitao Xu¹, Xianwei Zhou¹

1 School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
2 Beijing Institute of Electronic System Engineering, Beijing, China

* Corresponding Author: Jianwei An. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Advanced Networking Technologies for Intelligent Transportation and Connected Vehicles)

Computers, Materials & Continua 2026, 88(2), 53 https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2026.082418

Received 16 March 2026; Accepted 22 April 2026; Issue published 15 June 2026

Abstract

In intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs) system, driving users connect to service providers (SPs) to obtain location-based services (LBS). Users transmit large volumes of encrypted sensitive information related to their itineraries to SPs to access value-added services. Attackers may launch chosen-ciphertext attacks (CCA) against SPs by exploiting the malleability of homomorphic encryption. This enables adversaries to infer or steal private key information, thereby threatening the long-term privacy of user data. Furthermore, existing key management technologies in ICVs system predominantly rely on passive defense strategies and suffer from limitations such as single protection mechanisms, delayed updates, and limited adaptability. To address these issues, this paper proposes an adaptive key update security mechanism based on a differential game framework. This mechanism treats the cumulative information leakage of the private key as a contested resource to construct a differential game model. Based on the feedback Nash equilibrium (NE), the mechanism adaptively derives the optimal homomorphic private key update frequency in response to the attack frequency, thereby maximizing the defense benefit. Finally, numerical simulations validate the correctness of the proposed model and demonstrate the effectiveness of the mechanism.

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Keywords

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