BusCount: A Provable Replay Protection Solution for Automotive CAN Networks

Information technology has become eminent in the development of modern cars. More than 50 Electronic Control Units (ECUs) realize vehicular functions in hardware and software, ranging from engine control and infotainment to future autonomous driving systems. Not only do the connections to the outside world pose new threats, but also the in-vehicle communication between ECUs, realized by bus systems such as Controller Area Network (CAN), needs to be protected against manipulation and replay of messages. Multiple countermeasures were presented in the past making use of Message Authentication Codes and time stamps and message counters, respectively, to provide message freshness, most prominently AUTOSAR’s Secure Onboard Communication (SecOC). In this paper, we focus on the latter ones. As one aspect of this paper, using an adequate formal model and proof, we will show that the currently considered solutions exhibit deficiencies that are hard if not impossible to overcome within the scope of the respective approaches. We further present a hardware-based approach that avoids these deficiencies and formally prove its freshness properties. In addition, we show its practicability by a hardware implementation. Finally, we evaluate our approach in comparison to counter-based solutions currently being used.

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Development of a new calibration and monitoring system for in-vehicle electronic control units based on controller area network calibration protocol

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part D Journal of Automobile Engineering ◽

10.1243/095440705x35044 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 219 (12) ◽

pp. 1381-1389 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

J-X Wang ◽

J Feng ◽

X-J Mao ◽

L Yang ◽

B Zhou

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Monitoring System ◽

Monitoring Program ◽

Controller Area Network ◽

Present System ◽

Area Network ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Control Units ◽

Calibration Protocol ◽

Calibration Program

An interactive user-friendly calibration and monitoring system is critical for the development of electronic control units (ECU). In this study, a controller area network (CAN) driver, CAN calibration protocol (CCP) driver, monitoring program, and calibration program in the ECU were designed with the assembly language. The inquiry mode was used in monitoring the program and the interrupt mode was used in the calibration program, which ensured the real-time, simultaneous communication and interruption for the main control program. Mirror memory and the random access memory (RAM) calibration technique were used to reduce the write and read accesses to ECU, and, with the mapping of calibration RAM, calibration parameters could be changed online and used instantly. An efficient database management was used to achieve an accurate dynamic link between PC and ECU. The present system provides reliable, accurate, and quick CAN communication between ECU and PC, with a baud rate up to 500K bit/s. It also provides a friendly, compatible, and flexible calibration interface, and the functions of online calibration and real-time monitoring. This system has been used successfully in high-pressure, common rail, electronically controlled diesel engines and pure electrical vehicles (after a small modification).

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Design of a Gateway for Remotely Underwater Vehicles

Applied Mechanics and Materials ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.209-211.2138 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 209-211 ◽

pp. 2138-2141

Author(s):

Wei Dong Liu ◽

Xiang Yu Li ◽

Li'e Gao

Keyword(s):

Serial Communication ◽

Communication Protocols ◽

Underwater Vehicles ◽

Area Network ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Embedded Operation System ◽

Operation System ◽

Control Units ◽

Protocol Conversion ◽

First In First Out

A gateway based on ARM is presented to achieve mutil-protocol conversion among different electronic control units. To guarantee its real-time ability and stability, the μC/OS-II embedded operation system was adopted. The first-in-first-out data queue is used to balance the communication rate among the different communication protocols which consist of the Controller Area Network, TCP/IP and RS-232. The gateway can be used in remotely manipulation between the console with Ethernet and remote underwater vehicle with other serial communication protocols.

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Designing Attacks Against Automotive Control Area Network Bus and Electronic Control Units

2019 16th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC) ◽

10.1109/ccnc.2019.8651708 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Pascal Urien

Keyword(s):

Control Area ◽

Area Network ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Automotive Control ◽

Control Units ◽

Control Area Network

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Architecture of on-line data acquisition system for car on-board diagnostics

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201925202003 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 252 ◽

pp. 02003 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bartosz Kowalik ◽

Marcin Szpyrka

Keyword(s):

Data Acquisition ◽

Electronic Devices ◽

Area Network ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Instrument Cluster ◽

Abnormal Behaviour ◽

Automated Data Collection ◽

Data Mining Approach ◽

Control Units ◽

On Line

Modern cars produced for the last two decades are full of electronic devices called Electronic Control Units (ECU). They are responsible for collecting diagnostic data from different components such as the engine, breaks etc. using probes and sensors. The collected data are validated against built-in heuristic and abnormal behaviour is reported to a driver by a gauge on an instrument cluster. ECUs use data provided by other ECUs. Information is transmitted over the dedicated network called Controlled Area Network (CAN). Every car equipped with ECUs and CAN exposes information over universal diagnostic interface called On-Board Diagnostic. Using the interface, it is possible to gather car's live data. With the data mining approach, it is possible to exploit the collected more effectively to obtain much more information about the functioning of car components than it is provided by standard vehicle equipment. The paper describes how to build a laboratory set to facilitate automated data collection. It consists of three major components: data acquisition, automated logs collection and persistent storage with presentation tools. The first component is based on Torque application for which reverse engineering was performed.

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Collecting Big Data from Automotive ECUs beyond the CAN Bandwidth for Fault Visualization

Mobile Information Systems ◽

10.1155/2017/4395070 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2017 ◽

pp. 1-13 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jeong-Woo Lee ◽

Ki-Yong Choi ◽

Jung-Won Lee

Keyword(s):

Big Data ◽

Controller Area Network ◽

Area Network ◽

Cumulative Number ◽

Hardware In The Loop ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Automotive Electronic ◽

Control Units ◽

Multiple Regions

A hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) test is performed to verify the software functions mounted on automotive electronic control units (ECUs). However, the characteristics of HiL test limit the usage of common debugging techniques. Meanwhile, the logs of how the program uses memory can be utilized as debugging information collected by the controller area network (CAN). However, when the 32 KB memory is observed with 10 ms period, about 96% of the data on each cycle is lost, since the CAN only can transfer 1.25 KB of data at each cycle. Therefore, to overcome the above limitations, in this study, the memory is divided into multiple regions to transmit generated data via CAN. Next, the simulation is repeated for the each divided regions to obtain the different areas in each simulation. The collected data can be visualized as update information in each cycle and the cumulative number of updates. Through the proposed method, the ECU memory information during the HiL test was successfully collected using the CAN; the transmission is completed without any loss of data. In addition, the data was visualized in images containing the update information of the memory. These images contribute to shortening the debugging time for developers and testers.

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CA-CRE: Classification Algorithm-Based Controller Area Network Payload Format Reverse-Engineering Method

Electronics ◽

10.3390/electronics10192442 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (19) ◽

pp. 2442

Author(s):

Cheongmin Ji ◽

Taehyoung Ko ◽

Manpyo Hong

Keyword(s):

Reverse Engineering ◽

Controller Area Network ◽

Third Party ◽

Area Network ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Plain Text ◽

Security Research ◽

Control Units ◽

Vehicle Networks ◽

Gain Access

In vehicles, dozens of electronic control units are connected to one or more controller area network (CAN) buses to exchange information and send commands related to the physical system of the vehicles. Furthermore, modern vehicles are connected to the Internet via telematics control units (TCUs). This leads to an attack vector in which attackers can control vehicles remotely once they gain access to in-vehicle networks (IVNs) and can discover the formats of important messages. Although the format information is kept secret by car manufacturers, CAN is vulnerable, since payloads are transmitted in plain text. In contrast, the secrecy of message formats inhibits IVN security research by third-party researchers. It also hinders effective security tests for in-vehicle networks as performed by evaluation authorities. To mitigate this problem, a method of reverse-engineering CAN payload formats is proposed. The method utilizes classification algorithms to predict signal boundaries from CAN payloads. Several features were uniquely chosen and devised to quantify the type-specific characteristics of signals. The method is evaluated on real-world and synthetic CAN traces, and the results show that our method can predict at least 10% more signal boundaries than the existing methods.

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Design of CAN Bus Communication Interfaces for Forestry Machines

Computers ◽

10.3390/computers10110144 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (11) ◽

pp. 144

Author(s):

Geoffrey Spencer ◽

Frutuoso Mateus ◽

Pedro Torres ◽

Rogério Dionísio ◽

Ricardo Martins

Keyword(s):

Can Bus ◽

New Products ◽

Experimental System ◽

Area Network ◽

Electronic Control ◽

Transportation Industry ◽

Remote Diagnosis ◽

Sensors And Actuators ◽

Remote Communication ◽

Control Units

This paper presents the initial developments of new hardware devices targeted for CAN (Controller Area Network) bus communications in forest machines. CAN bus is a widely used protocol for communications in the automobile area. It is also applied in industrial vehicles and machines due to its robustness, simplicity, and operating flexibility. It is ideal for forestry machinery producers who need to couple their equipment to a machine that allows the transportation industry to recognize the importance of standardizing communications between tools and machines. One of the problems that producers sometimes face is a lack of flexibility in commercialized hardware modules; for example, in interfaces for sensors and actuators that guarantee scalability depending on the new functionalities required. The hardware device presented in this work is designed to overcome these limitations and provide the flexibility to standardize communications while allowing scalability in the development of new products and features. The work is being developed within the scope of the research project “SMARTCUT—Remote Diagnosis, Maintenance and Simulators for Operation Training and Maintenance of Forest Machines”, to incorporate innovative technologies in forest machines produced by the CUTPLANT S.A. It consists of an experimental system based on the PIC18F26K83 microcontroller to form a CAN node to transmit and receive digital and analog messages via CAN bus, tested and validated by the communication between different nodes. The main contribution of the paper focuses on the presentation of the development of new CAN bus electronic control units designed to enable remote communication between sensors and actuators, and the main controller of forest machines.

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A study of securing in-vehicle communication using IPSEC protocol

Journal of Electrical Engineering ◽

10.2478/jee-2021-0012 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 72 (2) ◽

pp. 89-98

Author(s):

Jan Lastinec ◽

Ladislav Hudec

Keyword(s):

Information Exchange ◽

Area Network ◽

Vehicle Communication ◽

Processing Power ◽

Control Units ◽

Novel Approach ◽

Viable Solution ◽

Vehicle Systems ◽

Ethernet Network ◽

Ipsec Protocol

Abstract Current vehicles are increasingly dependent on Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that control virtually every system of the vehicle. To enable advanced features automotive embedded systems are opening to external world, which raises security concerns. At the same time these innovative systems require more complex software and higher bandwidth for information exchange. Thanks to its bandwidth, payload size, and openness, Ethernet is a candidate technology for future in-vehicle architectures. This paper deals with design of a novel approach to secure In-vehicle Systems by taking advantage of Ethernet/IP technology and proven security mechanisms from TCP/IP model. Main goal is to design an efficient solution that meets requirements for latency without requiring high amounts of processing power and provides secure exchange of control messages. The work is mainly focused on the widespread Controller Area Network (CAN). The presented solution is based on encapsulation of CAN frames into UDP datagrams with added authenticity, integrity, and (if required) confidentiality of communication using IPsec protocol in transport mode. This creates a “secure tunnel across backbone Ethernet network in a vehicle. Next part of the paper presents extensive tests in simulation that are based on our previous experiments on hardware, in order to evaluate the characteristics of the designed security extension. The results indicate that using IPsec is a viable solution for securing in-vehicle communications.

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