A Differential Game-Based Security Mechanism for Protecting Data Elements Circulation

In intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs), driver-users connect with the Internet through roadside units (RSUs). The driver-users transmit a large amount of personally sensitive information about their journeys to RSUs to access value-added services. Simultaneously, the attackers infiltrate RSUs at a certain frequency to steal or intercept some connected ICVs users' privacy information, which causes a great threat to the privacy of user data elements. Moreover, most defense technologies in current ICVs systems rely on a passive defense approach, which has limitations such as single strategy and difficult flexible adjustment. Given the above issue, this paper proposes a data element circulation security defense mechanism based on differential game theory. The mechanism conceptualizes the health level of RSUs as a contested resource and establishes a differential game model. Leveraging the Nash equilibrium solution with feedback, the mechanism adaptively determines the optimal packet marking strength (PMS) in accordance with the attack frequency. And the defenders can achieve maximization the effectiveness of their defenses. Ultimately, numerical simulations are conducted to validate the accuracy of the model and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.