A robust, reliable and deployable framework for In-vehicle security

Abstract

Cyber attacks on financial and government institutions, critical infrastructure, voting systems, businesses, modern vehicles, etc., are on the rise. Fully connected autonomous vehicles are more vulnerable than ever to hacking and data theft. This is due to the fact that the protocols used for in-vehicle communication i.e. controller area network (CAN), FlexRay, local interconnect network (LIN), etc., lack basic security features such as message authentication, which makes it vulnerable to a wide range of attacks including spoofing attacks. This research presents methods to protect the vehicle against spoofing attacks. The proposed methods exploit uniqueness in the electronic control unit electronic control unit (ECU) and the physical channel between transmitting and destination nodes for linking the received packet to the source. Impurities in the digital device, physical channel, imperfections in design, material, and length of the channel contribute to the uniqueness of artifacts. I propose novel techniques for electronic control unit (ECU) identification in this research to address security vulnerabilities of the in-vehicle communication. The reliable ECU identification has the potential to prevent spoofing attacks launched over the CAN due to the inconsideration of the message authentication. In this regard, my techniques models the ECU-specific random distortion caused by the imperfections in digital-to-analog converter digital to analog converter (DAC), and semiconductor impurities in the transmitting ECU for fingerprinting. I also model the channel-specific random distortion, impurities in the physical channel, imperfections in design, material, and length of the channel are contributing factors behind physically unclonable artifacts. The lumped element model is used to characterize channel-specific distortions. This research exploits the distortion of the device (ECU) and distortion due to the channel to identify the transmitter and hence authenticate the transmitter.