Towards defending connected vehicles against attacks

Abstract

Connected vehicles utilize various communication types that take place between different entities such as vehicle, infrastructure, cloud, and mobile. Connected vehicles have sensors and Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that perform in-vehicle communications, and they communicate with the other entities using cellular, vehicular, and wireless networks. These communications may be compromised through different attacks including Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) and Man-At-The-End (MATE) attacks. Existing security solutions are not suitable for this complex integration between different technologies. In this paper, we provide a taxonomy of connected vehicle attacks that can be classified into four main categories. We identify the relations between these attacks and connected vehicle attributes and security requirements. We also present a trust model that contains various countermeasures to secure connected vehicles against different attacks. This trust model consists of four components: integrity, access control, availability, and privacy. The proposed trust model will ensure the achievement of the security requirements against common MITM and MATE attacks.