  Information security is an important issue in vehicular networks as the
accuracy and integrity of information is a prerequisite to satisfactory
performance of almost all vehicular network applications. In this paper, we
study the information security of a vehicular ad hoc network whose message may
be tampered by malicious vehicles. An analytical framework is developed to
analyze the process of message dissemination in a vehicular network with
malicious vehicles randomly distributed in the network. The probability that a
destination vehicle at a fixed distance away can receive the message correctly
from the source vehicle is obtained. Simulations are conducted to validate the
accuracy of the theoretical analysis. Our results demonstrate the impact of
network topology and the distribution of malicious vehicles on the correct
delivery of a message in vehicular ad hoc networks, and may provide insight on
the design of security mechanisms to improve the security of message
dissemination in vehicular networks.
