The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol is the most widely used standard for in-vehicle networks. However, the CAN protocol lacks essential security features (e.g., encryption) which makes it vulnerable to exploits by an adversary. In this paper, we develop CANLP, a Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based intrusion detection system to find whether a transmitted message originated from a legitimate ECU or an adversary. CANLP uses the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) to discern complex features associated with CAN data and trains ML models with these features to identify fuzzing, spoofing, and masquerade attacks. When an attack is detected, CANLP identifies the specific ECU on which the attack was mounted on. Through extensive experiments on four public vehicle network datasets, we show that CANLP performs attack classification with high F1-score of 0.9974. We also demonstrate using a testbed that CANLP can be deployed for attack detection on resource-constrained hardware a latency of < 0.05 ms.

Fifth-generation (5G) cellular communication networks are being deployed on applications beyond mobile devices, including vehicular networks and industry automation. Despite their increasing popularity, 5G networks, as defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), have been shown to be vulnerable against fake base station (FBS) attacks. An adversary carrying out an FBS attack emulates a legitimate base station by setting up a rogue base station. This enables the adversary to control the connection of any user equipment that (inadvertently) connects with the rogue base station. Such an adversary can gather sensitive information belonging to the user. While there is a large body of work focused on the development of tools to detect FBSs, the user equipment will continue to remain vulnerable to an FBS attack. In this paper, we propose BARON, a defense methodology to enable user equipment to determine whether a target base station that it is connecting to is legitimate or rogue. BARON accomplishes this by ensuring that the user receives an authentication token from the target base station which can be computed only by a legitimate and trusted entity. As a consequence, receiving such an authentication token from a base station ensures legitimacy of the base station. We evaluate BARON through extensive experiments on the handover process between base stations in 5G networks. Our experimental results show that BARON introduces an overhead of less than 1% during handover completion, which is 10000× lower than the overhead reported by a state-of-the-art method. BARON is also effective in thwarting an FBS attack and quickly recovering connection to a legitimate base station.

Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT) can be used for on-demand recharging of Electric Vehicles (EV) while driving. However, DWPT raises numerous security and privacy concerns. Recently, researchers demonstrated that DWPT systems are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. In an EV charging scenario, an attacker can prevent the authorized customer from charging, obtain a free charge by billing a victim user and track a target vehicle. State-of-the-art authentication schemes relying on centralized solutions are either vulnerable to various attacks or have high computational complexity, making them unsuitable for a dynamic scenario. In this paper, we propose Quick Electric Vehicle SEcure Charging (QEVSEC), a novel, secure, and efficient authentication protocol for the dynamic charging of EVs. Our idea for QEVSEC originates from multiple vulnerabilities we found in the state-of-the-art protocol that allows tracking of user activity and is susceptible to replay attacks. Based on these observations, the proposed protocol solves these issues and achieves lower computational complexity by using only primitive cryptographic operations in a very short message exchange. QEVSEC provides scalability and a reduced cost in each iteration, thus lowering the impact on the power needed from the grid.

The attacks that leverage the side-channels produced by processes running on mobile and IoT devices are a concrete threat for cyber–physical systems. This special issue is focused on the most recent research work that investigates novel aspects of this topic. This editorial summarizes the contributions of the seven accepted papers for this special issue.

To support the increasing spread of Electric Vehicles (EVs), Charging Stations (CSs) are being installed worldwide. The new generation of CSs employs the Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) paradigm by implementing novel standards such as the ISO 15118. This standard enables high-level communication between the vehicle and the charging column, helps manage the charge smartly, and simplifies the payment phase. This novel charging paradigm, which connects the Smart Grid to external networks (e.g., EVs and CSs), has not been thoroughly examined yet. Therefore, it may lead to dangerous vulnerability surfaces and new research challenges. In this paper, we present EVExchange, the first attack to steal energy during a charging session in a V2G communication: i.e., charging the attacker’s car while letting the victim pay for it. Furthermore, if reverse charging flow is enabled, the attacker can even sell the energy available on the victim’s car! Thus, getting the economic profit of this selling, and leaving the victim with a completely discharged battery. We developed a virtual and a physical testbed in which we validate the attack and prove its effectiveness in stealing the energy. To prevent the attack, we propose a lightweight modification of the ISO 15118 protocol to include a distance bounding algorithm. Finally, we validated the countermeasure on our testbeds. Our results show that the proposed countermeasure can identify all the relay attack attempts while being transparent to the user.

In recent years, the security of automotive Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) is facing urgent threats due to the widespread use of legacy in-vehicle communication systems. As a representative legacy bus system, the Controller Area Network (CAN) hosts Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that are crucial for the vehicles functioning. In this scenario, malicious actors can exploit the CAN vulnerabilities, such as the lack of built-in authentication and encryption schemes, to launch CAN bus attacks (e.g., suspension, injection, and masquerade attacks) with life-threatening consequences (e.g., disabling brakes). In this article, we present TACAN (Transmitter Authentication in CAN), which provides secure authentication of ECUs on the legacy CAN bus by exploiting the covert channels, without introducing CAN protocol modifications or traffic overheads (no extra bits or CAN messages are used). TACAN turns upside-down the originally malicious concept of covert channels and exploits it to build an effective defensive technique that facilitates transmitter authentication via a centralized, trusted Monitor Node. TACAN consists of three different covert channels for ECU authentication: 1) the Inter-Arrival Time (IAT)-based, leveraging the IATs of CAN messages; 2) the Least Significant Bit (LSB)-based, concealing authentication messages into the LSBs of normal CAN data; and 3) a hybrid covert channel, exploiting the combination of the first two. In order to validate TACAN, we implement the covert channels on the University of Washington (UW) EcoCAR (Chevrolet Camaro 2016) testbed. We further evaluate the bit error, throughput, and detection performance of TACAN through extensive experiments using the EcoCAR testbed and a publicly available dataset collected from Toyota Camry 2010. We demonstrate the feasibility of TACAN and the effectiveness of detecting CAN bus attacks, highlighting no traffic overheads and attesting the regular functionality of ECUs.

Trucks form a platoon, where they align in a lane on freeways, in order to save fuel. The trucks positioned behind the first truck in the platoon can save fuel because their air drag reduces. In a truck platoon, various technologies such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication protocol are exploited to control the trucks in the platoon effectively. The camera sensors measure distance between contiguous trucks in the platoon and these sensor measurements are provided to the ACC system. By using these sensor measurement, the ACC system controls the truck speed via in-vehicle network protocols such as the controller area network, which does not encrypt data or authenticate messages. Also, the V2V communication protocol is vulnerable to cyber attacks that disable the wireless channels among the trucks in the platoon. As a result, the ACC system and V2V communication protocol may introduce attack surfaces in a truck platoon. In this survey, we analyze the attack surfaces of a truck platoon under different perspectives. Then, we summarize the defense systems corresponding to the discussed attacks in terms of detection mechanisms, response countermeasures, and proactive defenses. Finally, we provide the research issues that need to be addressed in future.