Spreading Patterns of Malicious Information on Single-Lane Platooned Traffic in a Connected Environment

The connected vehicle can be easily attacked by cyber threats due to its communication through the wireless network in an open-access environment. But very few studies have paid attention to the spreading of malicious information such as denial of service, message delay/replay, and eavesdropping generated by cyberattacks. To this end, this article introduces an analytical model, named vehicular malicious information propagation (VMIP), which integrates a classical epidemic model through two-layer system structure, in which the upper layer describes the malicious information spreading and the lower describes the traffic flow dynamics. The proposed VMIP model is designated for platooned (one-lane, particularly) traffic. Numerical experiments show the proposed model can efficiently describe the interactions between traffic dynamics and malicious information spreading; and the information propagation highly depends on traffic flow patterns. This article is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the impacts of cyberattacks on traffic and lays a foundation for future development of control strategies on mitigating the disastrous effects of cyberattacks.