Timing-based Attacks and Mitigation for Safe HATS

This initial project will seek to understand the formulation for timing security in Highly Automated Transportation Systems (HATS). Position and Navigation security, both from the perspective of attack modeling and defense mechanism are farther along in the research community than Timing security in HATS. The goal is to tackle the grand objective of closing this gap. Specifically, the research team will consider timing attacks that can render state estimation and communication in HATS that can potentially result in safety incidents in addition to loss of reliability and data privacy. The team will take a foundational approach to this problem, considering outside and insider attacks towards capturing and manipulating timing information in state estimation and communication. This will provide guidance on communication and coding policies that then will be applied to use cases relevant in CARMEN+. Brief specifics follow. Timing information is crucial in HATs, in a variety of enabling technologies, methodologies and use cases including in localization and situation awareness in cooperative autonomous driving. This project will define the cybersecurity attack surface created by the crucial timing information. The identification and classification of attacks are comprehensive, though the team shall focus safety in connected vehicular networks. In this project, the team will investigate the use of timing signals and timing information to enable safe connected highly automated vehicular networks. These networks have to utilize timing information in wide ranging scales from incorporating situational awareness into autonomous/automated driving actions (eg for accident prevention) (micro or millisecond time scale) to cooperative routing (seconds or more). The team will tabulate the new attack surfaces that can results in these scenarios due to (i) external unintended factors (eg interference on communication signals), (ii) malicious external attackers (eg jamming timing signals, poisoning timing signals), (iii) internal (eg a vehicle in a platoon) attacks.

• Record URL:
  https://utc.engineering.osu.edu/timing-based-attacks-and-mitigation-safe-hats

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $84997
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348327

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Center for Automated Vehicle Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation

  Ohio State University
  Columbus, OH  United States  43210
• Project Managers:

  Kline, Robin

• Performing Organizations:

  Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research

  930 Kinnear Road
  Columbus, OH  United States  43212
• Principal Investigators:

  Yener, Aylin

• Start Date: 20231030
• Expected Completion Date: 20240830
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous vehicles; Computer security; Connected vehicles
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Security and Emergencies; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01901372
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Automated Vehicle Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348327
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Dec 4 2023 4:54PM