Cyber-Security for the Controller Area Network (CAN) Communication Protocol

Abstract

We propose a security mechanism to help prevent cyber-attacks (masquerade and replay) in vehicles with architecture based on Controller Area Network (CAN). We focus on CAN as it will likely continue being used in upcoming in-vehicle architectures. The CAN protocol contains no direct support for secure communications. Retrofitting the protocol with security mechanisms poses several challenges given the very limited data rates available (e.g., 500kbps) since bus utilization may significantly increase. In this paper, we focus on a security mechanism which keeps the bus utilization as low as possible. Through our experimental results, we show that our security mechanism can achieve high security levels while keeping communication overheads (e.g., bus load and message latency) at reasonable levels.