Towards HybridgeCAN, a hybrid bridged CAN platform for automotive security testing

Abstract

Over the years, the automotive industry has experienced a great progress in the electronics and information technology. To offer an easier and safer driving experience, vehicles started to incorporate more and more complex electronic components, also known as Electronic Control Units (ECUs), whereas the communication between different control units is demanded to a single CAN-Bus network or to multiple on-board wired networks. However, the automotive protocols have been designed without consider any security measures. Thus, modern vehicles are exposed to multiple classes of threats and cyber-attacks. Today, the security evaluation of current automotive standards and implementations requires expensive emulation systems (e.g. hardware-in-the-loop simulations), or real vehicles to conduct accurate security-tests. This work presents HybridgeCAN, a low-cost computer-to-vehicle testbed to simulate vehicles control units and communications over a hybrid CAN Bus network. We introduce the challenges that need to be addressed and overcome to create a hybrid automotive test system, with a special focus on security testing.