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An anonymous and unlinkable electronic toll collection system

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Abstract

Electronic toll collection (ETC) systems make it easier for drivers to pay the fee for driving on toll roads. Nevertheless, digitalization of any process enables the service provider to collect digital records containing an accurate description of all the transactions carried out by users. This is the case for ETC systems. Moreover, records about road usage contain data about people’s driving habits, from which highly sensitive personal information can be inferred. Hence, these systems should be designed in such a way that the privacy of drivers is preserved. In this paper we present an ETC system which guarantees that drivers pay the amount corresponding to their journeys while preserving their privacy in the sense that all the interactions of a car with the system are anonymous and unlinkable. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ETC proposal in which the system server is unable to link the entrance and exit points of a trip. The security of the proposal has been analyzed, while its performance has been tested from a prototype implementation which proves its feasibility.

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Code availability

The code used in the experiments will be provided if requested by e-mail to the authors.

Notes

  1. Alternatively, a mobile phone with the mentioned features could play the on-board computer role.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (project number MTM2017-83271-R).

Funding

This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (project number MTM2017-83271-R).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Universitat de Lleida, C. Jaume II, 69, 25001, Lleida, Spain

    Ricard Borges, Francesc Sebé & Magda Valls

  2. CyberCat: Center for Cybersecurity Research of Catalonia, Lleida, Spain

    Francesc Sebé & Magda Valls

Authors
  1. Ricard Borges
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  2. Francesc Sebé
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  3. Magda Valls
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Prototype implementation and experiments were performed by Ricard Borges. The security analysis was performed by Francesc Sebé. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ricard Borges. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Francesc Sebé.

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Borges, R., Sebé, F. & Valls, M. An anonymous and unlinkable electronic toll collection system. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 21, 1151–1162 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-022-00604-8

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