Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile

By Karl Koscher, Alexei Czeskis, Franziska Roesner, Shwetak Patel, Tadayoshi Kohno, Stephen Checkoway, Damon McCoy, Brian Kantor, Danny Anderson, Hovav Shacham, and Stefan Savage.

In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (“Oakland”) 2010. IEEE Computer Society, May 2010.

Abstract

Modern automobiles are no longer mere mechanical devices; they are pervasively monitored and controlled by dozens of digital computers coordinated via internal vehicular networks. While this transformation has driven major advancements in efficiency and safety, it has also introduced a range of new potential risks. In this paper we experimentally evaluate these issues on a modern automobile and demonstrate the fragility of the underlying system structure. We demonstrate that an attacker who is able to infiltrate virtually any Electronic Control Unit (ECU) can leverage this ability to completely circumvent a broad array of safety-critical systems. Over a range of experiments, both in the lab and in road tests, we demonstrate the ability to adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input — including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on. We find that it is possible to bypass rudimentary network security protections within the car, such as maliciously bridging between our car's two internal subnets. We also present composite attacks that leverage individual weaknesses, including an attack that embeds malicious code in a car's telematics unit and that will completely erase any evidence of its presence after a crash. Looking forward, we discuss the complex challenges in addressing these vulnerabilities while considering the existing automotive ecosystem.

Material

Reference

@inproceedings{car10,
	author =	{Karl Koscher and Alexei Czeskis and Franziska
			 Roesner and Shwetak Patel and Tadayoshi Kohno
			 and Stephen Checkoway and Damon McCoy and
			 Brian Kantor and Danny Anderson and Hovav
			 Shacham and Stefan Savage},
	title =		{Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern
			 Automobile},
	booktitle =	{Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and
			 Privacy (``Oakland'') 2010},
	year =		2010,
	editor =	{David Evans and Giovanni Vigna},
	month =		may,
	organization =	{IEEE Computer Society},
	pages =		{447-462},
	url =		{https://cs.ucsd.edu/~scheckow/papers/car2010.html},
}