Evaluation of CAN Bus Security Challenges

• Main Authors: Mehmet Bozdal, Mohammad Samie, Sohaib Aslam, Ian Jennions
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: CAN network; CAN security; ECU; in-vehicle communication
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/8/2364

The automobile industry no longer relies on pure mechanical systems; instead, it benefits from many smart features based on advanced embedded electronics. Although the rise in electronics and connectivity has improved comfort, functionality, and safe driving, it has also created new attack surfaces to penetrate the in-vehicle communication network, which was initially designed as a close loop system. For such applications, the Controller Area Network (CAN) is the most-widely used communication protocol, which still suffers from various security issues because of the lack of encryption and authentication. As a result, any malicious/hijacked node can cause catastrophic accidents and financial loss. This paper analyses the CAN bus comprehensively to provide an outlook on security concerns. It also presents the security vulnerabilities of the CAN and a state-of-the-art attack surface with cases of implemented attack scenarios and goes through different solutions that assist in attack prevention, mainly based on an intrusion detection system (IDS).