Controller Area Network Systems Research Articles

Vulnerabilities and Attacks on CAN-Based 3D Printing/Additive Manufacturing

Recent advancements in 3D-printing/additive manufacturing has brought forth a new interest in the use of Controller Area Network (CAN) for multi-module, plug-and-play bus support for their embedded systems. CAN systems provide a variety of benefits that can outweigh typical conventional wire-loom protocols in many categories. However, implementation of CAN also brings forth vulnerabilities provided by its spoofable, destination-encoded shared communication bus. These vulnerabilities result in undetectable fault injection, packet manipulation, unauthorized packet logging/sniffing, and more. They also provide attackers the capability to manipulate all sensor information, commands, and create unsafe operating conditions using only a single compromised node on the CAN network (bypassing all root-of-trust in the modules). Thus, malicious hardware requires only a connection to the bus for access to all traffic. In this paper, we discuss the effects of repurposed CAN-based attacks capable of manipulating sensor data, overriding systems, and injecting dangerous commands on the Controller Area Network using various entry methods. As a case study, we also showed a spoofing attack on critical data modules within a commercial 3D printer.

Autonomous network services using machine learning-based cybersecurity

The crucial topic of protecting Controller Area Network (CAN) bus systems in autonomous vehicles against cyberattacks is covered in this research. The risk and consequences of cyberattacks on CAN systems rise considerably as vehicles become increasingly automated and linked, creating safety and security hazards. In order to identify anomalies and categorize traffic into attack or conventional categories, the study looks at the weaknesses of CAN buses and recommends using machine learning techniques like Decision Trees, Clustering, and Deep Learning. To improve the detection of anomalies and cyber-attacks in CAN systems, the suggested methods combine data balance, feature selection, and ensemble learning with a voting-based strategy. Metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and confusion matrix can be used to assess the presented approaches. According to the study's findings, these suggested solutions provide a more reliable and efficient way to identify cyber-attacks and anomalies in CAN systems, boosting the development of cyber security for autonomous vehicles. While outlining the necessity of information security and the advantages of autonomous vehicles, it also suggests cutting-edge ways to strengthen their security. Overall, this article highlights the urgent need for improved security measures in autonomous cars since cyberattacks pose a serious threat to the functioning of these vehicles in a safe and secure manner. The study proposes a potential approach to enhancing the security of CAN bus systems in autonomous vehicles by suggesting cutting-edge approaches for identifying anomalies and cyber-attacks.

Triple ID Flexible MAC for Can Security Improvement

The development of automotive-information & communication technology (ICT) convergence has resulted in various vehicle-based electrical/electronic (E/E) systems. An automotive E/E system consists of one or more electronic control units (ECUs), sensors and actuators. With the commercialization of connected/autonomous cars, vehicle-based wireless communication systems have appeared, and are expected to grow in popularity. This increases the number of attack surfaces that can potentially threaten in-vehicle controller area network (CAN). To combat the vulnerabilities of the CAN protocol, the CAN data field should be encrypted and transmitted with authentication codes. Recently, a method of transmitting authentication codes by modifying the CAN protocol was proposed. However, changing the original CAN protocol can cause serious problems in CAN systems. In this paper, to enhance CAN security, a data compression algorithm is used to reduce the data frame length so that there is space for a message authentication code (MAC) to be contained inside the data field. The proposed algorithm guarantees that all CAN frames are authenticated by a MAC of at least four bytes without any change of the original CAN protocol. Simulations using CAN data from Kia Sorento, Kia Soul, and LS Mtron vehicles show that the proposed algorithm works successfully with only a slight increase in the peak load.

Security-Aware Obfuscated Priority Assignment for Automotive CAN Platforms

Security in automotive in-vehicle networks is an increasing problem with the growing connectedness of road vehicles. This article proposes a security-aware priority assignment for automotive controller area network (CAN) platforms with the aim of mitigating scaling effects of attacks on vehicle fleets. CAN is the dominating field bus in the automotive domain due to its simplicity, low cost, and robustness. While messages might be encrypted to enhance the security of CAN systems, their priorities are usually identical for automotive platforms, comprising generally a large number of vehicle models. As a result, the identifier uniquely defines which message is sent, allowing attacks to scale across a fleet of vehicles with the same platform. As a remedy, we propose a methodology that is capable of determining obfuscated message identifiers for each individual vehicle. Since identifiers directly represent message priorities, the approach has to take the resulting response time variations into account while satisfying application deadlines for each vehicle schedule separately. Our approach relies on Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Program (QCQP) solving in two stages, specifying first a set of feasible fixed priorities and subsequently bounded priorities for each message. With the obtained bounds, obfuscated identifiers are determined, using a very fast randomized sampling. The experimental results, consisting of a large set of synthetic test cases and a realistic case study, give evidence of the efficiency of the proposed approach in terms of scalability. The results also show that the diversity of obtained identifiers is effectively optimized with our approach, resulting in a very good obfuscation of CAN messages in in-vehicle communication.

Improving flexibility and fault-management in CAN-based “Shared-Clock” architectures

The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol is widely employed in distributed control systems in a number of sectors (including automotive, industrial, medical and satellite systems). In many such sectors, predictable behavior is a key consideration: such a characteristic is usually associated with time-triggered (TT) system architectures rather than with event-triggered solutions which are more common in CAN systems. Previous studies have illustrated how TT “Shared-Clock” (S-C) algorithms can be used in conjunction with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) microcontrollers for creating reliable distributed control systems at low cost. In such studies, it has generally been assumed that S-C designs will be implemented using a bus topology on a CAN network. Such designs met cost requirements but certain flexibility/reliability issues predominantly presented by their bus topology have made their use controversial in safety–critical applications. In this paper, we demonstrate that the use of a Shared-Clock protocol with a novel CAN-based star topology synthesized from COTS components can improve the flexibility and reliability of CAN-based S-C designs without significantly increasing costs.

Expanding transmission capacity of can systems using dual communication channels with kalman prediction

The controller area network (CAN) protocol is widely used for in-vehicle network (IVN) systems, and many automotive companies also use the CAN in chassis network systems. However, the increasing number of electronic control units (ECUs) dictated by the need for more intelligent and fuel-efficient functions requires an IVN system with a greater transmission capacity and less network delay. Automotive companies have tried several approaches such as segmenting CAN systems and developing time-triggered protocols. This paper presents a practical method for increasing the transmission capacity and reducing the network delay in CAN systems using dual communication channels with a traffic-balancing algorithm based on Kalman prediction to forecast the traffic on each channel and allocate frames to the one that is most appropriate. An experimental testbed using commercial microcontrollers with two or more CAN protocol controllers was used to demonstrate the feasibility of the Kalman traffic-balancing algorithm. Experimental results show that the traffic-balancing CAN system with Kalman prediction reduced the transmission delay of all priority messages compared to that of a simple method, such as a channel-switching CAN, without sacrificing the performance for high-priority messages.

Orthogonal, Fault-Tolerant, and High-Precision Clock Synchronization for the Controller Area Network

The controller area network (CAN) is facing a great opportunity. The maturity of this technology makes many researchers believe that CAN may be adopted in more critical systems. However, the suitability of CAN for these challenging applications strongly depends on our capacity to integrate all the solutions already available into a single, comprehensive architecture. We claim that clock synchronization plays a fundamental role in such architecture. Therefore, the means to achieve a solution fulfilling the expected requirements on reliability, cost, and precision must be deeply investigated. This paper discusses the relevance of clock synchronization in the future of CAN systems and describes a novel solution to supply this service. This solution exhibits several advantages: it provides very high precision, causes very low communication and computation overhead, and includes mechanisms to provide fault tolerance. Moreover, and in contrast to previous proposals, it is designed to be orthogonal to the rest of the system. Thus, it can be directly incorporated to any CAN system, without having to replace any of the components, which reduces the cost increment caused by the new service.

Controller Area Network (CAN) schedulability analysis: Refuted, revisited and revised

Controller Area Network (CAN) is used extensively in automotive applications, with in excess of 400 million CAN enabled microcontrollers manufactured each year. In 1994 schedulability analysis was developed for CAN, showing how worst-case response times of CAN messages could be calculated and hence guarantees provided that message response times would not exceed their deadlines. This seminal research has been cited in over 200 subsequent papers and transferred to industry in the form of commercial CAN schedulability analysis tools. These tools have been used by a large number of major automotive manufacturers in the design of in-vehicle networks for a wide range of cars, millions of which have been manufactured during the last decade.This paper shows that the original schedulability analysis given for CAN messages is flawed. It may provide guarantees for messages that will in fact miss their deadlines in the worst-case. This paper provides revised analysis resolving the problems with the original approach. Further, it highlights that the priority assignment policy, previously claimed to be optimal for CAN, is not in fact optimal and cites a method of obtaining an optimal priority ordering that is applicable to CAN. The paper discusses the possible impact on commercial CAN systems designed and developed using flawed schedulability analysis and makes recommendations for the revision of CAN schedulability analysis tools.

An improved CAN fieldbus for industrial applications

The controller area network (CAN) was originally developed to support cheap and rather simple automotive applications. However, because of its performance and low cost, it is also being considered in automated manufacturing and process control environments to interconnect intelligent devices, such as modern sensors and actuators. Unfortunately, CAN, in its current form, is not able to either share out the system bandwidth among the different devices fairly or to grant an upper bound on the transmission times experienced by the nodes connected to the communication medium as it happens, for instance, in the token-based networks. In this paper, two slight modifications of the basic CAN protocol are presented that satisfy the above-mentioned requirements at the expense of a very small degradation of the system's performance. Both these solutions exhibit a high degree of compatibility with those devices which have already been designed for the conventional CAN fieldbus. Besides introducing the new mechanisms, this paper also presents some performance figures obtained using a specially developed software simulator, while the behavior of the new mechanisms is compared to the traditional CAN systems, in order to see how effective they are.