Evaluation of DoS Attacks on Vehicle CAN Bus System

Abstract

The controller area network (CAN) has been widely used in the modern automotives for interconnecting electrical components such as air bag system, anti-lock braking system (ABS), electronic dashboard, fuel injection system, and etc. In order to make sure the urgent message, e.g., ABS, could be processed in the shortest time, CAN bus protocol establishes the priority of the message, and allows certain messages can take priority over others. It goes without saying that this design is quite desirable for vehicular applications; however, it also provides vulnerability for Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. It is possible for malicious adversaries to cause major damage by exploiting flaws in the CAN protocol design or implementation. Some of these attacks can lead to catastrophic consequences for both the vehicle and the driver. This paper proposed a study on the impact of such priority based DoS attacks. Experimental results shown that a significant impact on the CAN bus efficiency of priority- based DoS attacks. In addition, a single attacker could block an entire CAN network just using fake CAN message with continuous injection.