Achieving Confidentiality Security Service for CAN

Abstract

The paper addresses the security service infrastructure included in the controller area network (CAN) standard, proposing the incorporation of a confidentiality service for that kind of network. Regarding security, CAN currently supports only a special kind of data transfer service, namely safety, for error detection, signalling, and self checking. Nevertheless, as CAN has become more diverse, complex and integrated into other kinds of networks, it must provide higher security services, such as confidentiality, especially for its bus, which is the most attack-prone point on CAN. Taking into account, on one hand, the security services defined by ISO and, on the other hand, the security services defined by CAN, the paper proposes to incorporate a confidentiality service to CAN based on RC4, which is a lightweight symmetric stream cipher algorithm. The paper then presents the clock cycles required for encrypting different data sizes of the CAN frame in the 87C196CB, which is a microcontroller with integrated CAN 2.0 serial interface.