A lightweight-X-authentication protocol over automotive gateway

Abstract

One of the most dynamic industries nowadays is the automotive industry. It has dramatically changed from safe, comfortable, and equipped with many entertainment systems to connected autonomous vehicles during the last decade. Although the “Connected Autonomous vehicles” trend dramatically influences the economy, it increases automation and connectivity. Consequently, vehicles can be considered an Internet of Things (IoT) network. Accordingly, the cyberattack surface is more significant, with many vulnerabilities. Considering the fundamental security weakness of automotive onboard networks, besides their superimposing, we firmly believe that a unified security solution is required to resolve the current automotive security problem. This paper proposes an automotive security solution called Generic Automotive Security Suit (GASS). (GASS) is designed to be a practical security solution deployed in the complicated automotive environment. In addition, it defines a standard secure inter-communication between onboard networks. We also introduce the Lightweight Generic Authentication Protocol (LXAP) as the building block of the GASS. We address different security scenarios which face the industry nowadays. The new proposed system does not affect the complexity level of the automotive network. In addition, our simulation results have shown that the LXAP enables security preservation over vehicles’ complex networks.