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Cyber-Physical System Security: Position Spoofing in a Class Project on Autonomous Vehicles

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Robotics in Education (RiE 2019)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1023))

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Abstract

We present an experiment to gauge student awareness of security threats to cyber-physical systems. Students in a third-year engineering course were tasked with designing, building, and testing small, robotic vehicles that could perform basic goal seeking. Unbeknownst to the students, the indoor positioning system for the project was deliberately configured to report incorrect positional information, similar to the effect of GPS spoofing. When asked to conjecture reasons for the spurious behaviour of their robots, none of the students considered the possibility that the feedback system was sending spoofed data, despite being given case studies in cyber-physical system security earlier in the term. The results suggest that students need more direct education in threats and design considerations for security of cyber-physical systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The equivalent band in Europe is centered on 868 MHz.

  2. 2.

    One student nearly discovered the spoof before the final demonstrations. The instructor was testing the system and the student noticed that the coordinates reported by the camera were clearly incorrect. The instructor quickly went to his computer on the pretext of “seeing for himself” and disabled the spoof, after which the student discounted the phenomenon as a glitch.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from Virginia’s 4-VA fund.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

    Gregory C. Lewin

Authors
  1. Gregory C. Lewin
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Correspondence to Gregory C. Lewin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Munir Merdan

  2. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Wilfried Lepuschitz

  3. Practical Robotics Institute Austria, Vienna, Austria

    Gottfried Koppensteiner

  4. Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Richard Balogh

  5. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Obdržálek

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Lewin, G.C. (2020). Cyber-Physical System Security: Position Spoofing in a Class Project on Autonomous Vehicles. In: Merdan, M., Lepuschitz, W., Koppensteiner, G., Balogh, R., Obdržálek, D. (eds) Robotics in Education. RiE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1023. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26945-6_39

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