Аннотация:Vehicular ad‐hoc networks (VANETs) are the most hopeful approach to provide safety information and other infotainment applications to both drivers and passengers. VANETs are formed by intelligent vehicles equipped with On Board Units and wireless communication devices. Hence, VANETs become a key component of the intelligent transport system. Even though VANETs are used in enormous number of applications, there are many security challenges and issues that need to be overcome to make VANETs usable in practice. A great deal of study has been done towards it, but security mechanisms in VANETs are not effective. This study provides a summary about the VANET, characteristics and security challenges. This study also provides a summary of some major security attacks on security services such as availability, confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non‐repudiation and the corresponding countermeasures to make VANET communications more secure.