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With the increasing number of embedded processors and wireless interfaces being incorporated into modern automobiles, cybersecurity is emerging as a major concern for the automotive industry. Numerous remote attack surfaces and a high level of computer-controlled critical systems make security of automotive networks an increasingly complex technical challenge.
Many researchers have demonstrated attacks that leverage a car's wireless interfaces to gain access to internal communication buses. With bus-level access, an attacker has the ability to control or manipulate critical systems, such as anti-lock brakes and cruise control, potentially affecting driver safety.
This article describes novel bus-level countermeasures for a controller area network (CAN) bus. The proposed methods use custom CAN hardware that leverages the error confinement functionality in the CAN specification to suppress and eventually control malicious transmissions on the bus.
Other attempts to prevent unauthorized transmission have required custom CAN controllers on all electronic control units (ECUs). The methods described in this article require only a single custom controller, keeping cost low and making retrofitting legacy systems more practical. We successfully implemented and tested the proposed design on a reference CAN.
One of the most widely used automotive bus standards is CAN. Before the standard emerged, wiring between ECUs was typically point-to-point, resulting in complex, heavy, and expensive wiring harnesses. CANs were designed to reduce the complexity of automotive wiring harnesses by introducing a low-cost broadcast network to connect the increasing number of ECUs in modern cars.
CANs simplified the connections by allowing all ECUs in a network to be connected by a two-wire shared bus. While a CAN provides real-time, high-speed communication between ECUs, it lacks provisions for authentication and confidentiality.
Any ECU is able to send any properly formed CAN message. With no enforced source fields in the CAN frame, masquerade attacks are possible. Due to the broadcast nature of the bus, a single compromised ECU is able to send malicious instructions to other ECUs in the network.
Full article: IEEE Vehicular Technology
Magazine, Volume 12, Number 4, December 2017 | 
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