Adding Cyberattacks To An Industry-Leading CAN Simulator

Recent years have seen an increase in the data usage in cars, particularly as they become more autonomous and connected. With the rise in data use have come concerns about automotive cyber-security. An in-vehicle network shown to be particularly vulnerable is the Controller Area Network (CAN), which is the communication bus used by the car’s safety critical and performance critical components. Cyber attacks on the CAN
have been demonstrated, leading to research to develop attack
detection and attack prevention systems. Such research requires
representative attack demonstrations and data for testing. Obtaining this data is problematical due to the expense, danger and
impracticality of using real cars on roads or tracks for example
attacks. Whilst CAN simulators are available, these tend to be
configured for testing conformance and functionality, rather than
analysing security and cyber vulnerability. We therefore adapt a
leading, industry-standard, CAN simulator to incorporate a core
set of cyber attacks that are representative of those proposed by
other researchers. Our adaptation allows the user to configure
the attacks, and can be added easily to the free version of the
simulator. Here we describe the simulator and, after reviewing
the attacks that have been demonstrated and discussing their
commonalities, we outline the attacks that we have incorporated
into the simulator