Finding Vulnerabilities of Autonomous Vehicle Stacks to Physical Adversaries

Autonomous Driving (AD) vehicles must interact and respond in real-time to multiple sensor signals indicating the behavior of other agents in the environment, such as other vehicles, and pedestrians near the ego vehicle (i.e., the vehicle itself). While autonomous vehicle (AV) developers tend to generate numerous test cases in simulations to detect safety and security problems, to the best of our knowledge, they are not testing for malicious physical interactions from attackers, such as by placing emergency cones in the hood of an AV or driving maneuvers that nearby human drivers or other AVs might perform. The main goal of our project is to develop automatic testing tools to evaluate the safety and security of autonomous vehicle stacks against unanticipated critical physical conditions created by attackers. Specifically, we aim to demonstrate adversarial driving maneuvers in different real-world scenarios, highlighting the potential consequences for AV safety and security, build an attack framework in a simulation environment to study the optimal discovery of adversarial driving maneuvers, and contribute to the development of a skilled AV security workforce. In this way, this effort aims to enable the deployment of increasingly trustworthy transportation systems.

• Record URL:
  • https://www.clemson.edu/cecas/tracr/documents/projects/final-reports/berkay-report.pdf

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $251852
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552344812

  69A3552348317

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  Purdue University

  1040 South River Road
  West Lafayette, IN  United States  47907

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  1156 High Street, Mail Stop SOE2
  Santa Cruz, California  United Kingdom  95064
• Managing Organizations:

  National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency (TraCR)

  Clemson University
  Clemson, SC  United States 

  Purdue University

  1040 South River Road
  West Lafayette, IN  United States  47907
• Project Managers:

  Chowdhury, Mashrur

• Performing Organizations:

  Purdue University

  1040 South River Road
  West Lafayette, IN  United States  47907

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  1156 High Street, Mail Stop SOE2
  Santa Cruz, California  United Kingdom  95064
• Principal Investigators:

  Celik, Berkay

  Cardenas, Alvaro

  Fremont, Daniel

  Ukkusuri, Satish

• Start Date: 20240101
• Expected Completion Date: 20241231
• Actual Completion Date: 20250531
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous vehicles; Computer security; Crimes; Driving behavior; Physical phenomena; Risk assessment; Safety
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; Security and Emergencies; Transportation (General); Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01906983
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency (TraCR)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552344812, 69A3552348317
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Feb 5 2024 3:58PM