A survey on CAN bus protocol: attacks, challenges, and potential solutions

The vehicles are equipped with electronic control units that control their functions. These units communicate with each other via in-vehicle communication protocols like CAN bus. Although CAN is the most common in-vehicle communication protocol, its lack of encryption and authentication can cause serious security shortcomings. In the literature, many attacks are reported related to CAN bus and the number increases with rising connectivity in the cars. In this paper, we present CAN protocol and analyze its security vulnerabilities. Then we survey the implemented attacks and proposed solutions in the literature

Evaluation of CAN bus security challenges

The automobile industry no longer relies on pure mechanical systems; instead, it benefits from many smart features based on advanced embedded electronics. Although the rise in electronics and connectivity has improved comfort, functionality, and safe driving, it has also created new attack surfaces to penetrate the in-vehicle communication network, which was initially designed as a close loop system. For such applications, the Controller Area Network (CAN) is the most-widely used communication protocol, which still suffers from various security issues because of the lack of encryption and authentication. As a result, any malicious/hijacked node can cause catastrophic accidents and financial loss. This paper analyses the CAN bus comprehensively to provide an outlook on security concerns. It also presents the security vulnerabilities of the CAN and a state-of-the-art attack surface with cases of implemented attack scenarios and goes through different solutions that assist in attack prevention, mainly based on an intrusion detection system (IDS

Cyberattacks and Countermeasures For In-Vehicle Networks

As connectivity between and within vehicles increases, so does concern about safety and security. Various automotive serial protocols are used inside vehicles such as Controller Area Network (CAN), Local Interconnect Network (LIN) and FlexRay. CAN bus is the most used in-vehicle network protocol to support exchange of vehicle parameters between Electronic Control Units (ECUs). This protocol lacks security mechanisms by design and is therefore vulnerable to various attacks. Furthermore, connectivity of vehicles has made the CAN bus not only vulnerable from within the vehicle but also from outside. With the rise of connected cars, more entry points and interfaces have been introduced on board vehicles, thereby also leading to a wider potential attack surface. Existing security mechanisms focus on the use of encryption, authentication and vehicle Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), which operate under various constrains such as low bandwidth, small frame size (e.g. in the CAN protocol), limited availability of computational resources and real-time sensitivity. We survey In-Vehicle Network (IVN) attacks which have been grouped under: direct interfaces-initiated attacks, telematics and infotainment-initiated attacks, and sensor-initiated attacks. We survey and classify current cryptographic and IDS approaches and compare these approaches based on criteria such as real time constrains, types of hardware used, changes in CAN bus behaviour, types of attack mitigation and software/ hardware used to validate these approaches. We conclude with potential mitigation strategies and research challenges for the future

Developing and Deploying Security Applications for In-Vehicle Networks

Radiological material transportation is primarily facilitated by heavy-duty on-road vehicles. Modern vehicles have dozens of electronic control units or ECUs, which are small, embedded computers that communicate with sensors and each other for vehicle functionality. ECUs use a standardized network architecture--Controller Area Network or CAN--which presents grave security concerns that have been exploited by researchers and hackers alike. For instance, ECUs can be impersonated by adversaries who have infiltrated an automotive CAN and disable or invoke unintended vehicle functions such as brakes, acceleration, or safety mechanisms. Further, the quality of security approaches varies wildly between manufacturers. Thus, research and development of after-market security solutions have grown remarkably in recent years. Many researchers are exploring deployable intrusion detection and prevention mechanisms using machine learning and data science techniques. However, there is a gap between developing security system algorithms and deploying prototype security appliances in-vehicle. In this paper, we, a research team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory working in this space, highlight challenges in the development pipeline, and provide techniques to standardize methodology and overcome technological hurdles.Comment: 10 pages, PATRAM 2

Anomaly Detection in Vehicular CAN Bus Using Message Identifier Sequences

As the automotive industry moves forward, security of vehicular networks becomes increasingly important. Controller area network (CAN bus) remains as one of the most widely-used protocols for in-vehicle communication. In this work, we study an intrusion detection system (IDS) which detects anomalies in vehicular CAN bus traffic by analyzing message identifier sequences. We collected CAN bus data from a heavy-duty truck over a period of several months. First, we identify the properties of CAN bus traffic which enable the described approach, and demonstrate that they hold in different datasets collected from different vehicles. Then, we perform an experimental study of the IDS, using the collected CAN bus data and procedurally generated attacks. We analyze the performance of the IDS, considering various attack types and hyperparameter values. The analysis yields promising sensitivity and specificity values, as well as very fast decision times and acceptable memory footprint.</p

Detecting CAN Attacks on J1939 and NMEA 2000 Networks

J1939 is a networking layer built on top of the widespread CAN bus used for communication between different subsystems within a vehicle. The J1939 and NMEA 2000 protocols standardize data enrichment for these subsystems, and are used for trucks, weapon systems, naval vessels, and other industrial systems. Practical security solutions for existing CAN based communication systems are notoriously difficult because of the lack of cryptographic capabilities of the devices involved. In this paper we propose a novel intrusion detection system (IDS) for J1939 and NMEA 2000 networks. Our IDS (CANDID) combines timing analysis with a packet manipulation detection system and data analysis. This data analysis enables us to capture the state of the vehicle, detect messages with irregular timing intervals, and take advantage of the dependencies between different Electronic Control Units (ECUs) to restrict even the most advanced attacker. Our IDS is deployed and tested on multiple vehicles, and has demonstrated greater accuracy and detection capabilities than previous work

An Efficient Key Management Scheme For In-Vehicle Network

Vehicle technology has developed rapidly these years, however, the security measures for in-vehicle network does not keep up with the trend. Controller area network(CAN) is the most used protocol in the in-vehicle network. With the characteristic of CAN, there exists many vulnerabilities including lacks of integrity and confidentiality, and hence CAN is vulnerable to various attacks such as impersonation attack, replay attack, etc. In order to implement the authentication and encryption, secret key derivation is necessary. In this work, we proposed an efficient key management scheme for in-vehicle network. In particular, the scheme has five phases. In the first and second phase, we utilize elliptic curve cryptography-based key encapsulation mechanism(KEM) to derive a pairwise secret between each ECU and a central secure ECU in the same group. Then in the third phase, we design secure communication to derive group shared secret among all ECU in a group. In the last two phases, SECU is not needed, regular ECU can derive session key on their own. We presented a possible attack analysis(chosen-ciphertext attack as the main threat) and a security property analysis for our scheme. Our scheme is evaluated based on a hardware-based experiment of three different microcontrollers and a software-based simulation of IVNS. We argue that based on our estimation and the experiment result, our scheme performs better in communication and computation overhead than similar works