Identifying compromised electronic control units via voltage fingerprinting
AssigneeThe Regents of the University of Michigan
InventorsKang G. Shin, Kyong-Tak Cho
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Research efforts to detect and prevent possible attacks on vehicles have led to various defense schemes that are capable of preventing attacks and/or determining the presence/absence of an attack on the in-vehicle network. However, these efforts still cannot identify which Electronic Control Unit (ECU) on the in-vehicle network actually mounted the attack. Moreover, they cannot detect attacks by an adversary that impersonates ECUs injecting in-vehicle messages aperiodically. Identifying the source of an attack is essential for efficient forensic, isolation, security patch, etc. To fill these gaps, a method is presented for detecting and identifying compromised ECUs in a vehicle network.
Claims18
A method for detecting a compromised electronic control unit (ECU) connected to a vehicle bus, comprising:
- storing, by a monitor node, a plurality of learned fingerprints in a data store accessible to the monitor node, where each fingerprint in the plurality of learned fingerprints is derived from voltage measurements made during transmission of a message on the vehicle bus and uniquely identifies one of the ECUs connected to the vehicle bus;
- measuring, by the monitor node, voltage on the vehicle bus during transmission of a message on the vehicle bus by an ECU, where the voltage on the vehicle bus is measured at less than one million samples per second, wherein measuring voltage further comprises measuring voltage of dominant bits transmitted on the vehicle bus while discarding voltage measurements that correspond to an acknowledgement of the message;
- constructing, by the monitor node, an unknown fingerprint from the plurality of voltage measurements made during the transmission of the message, where the unknown fingerprint is indicative of statistical dispersion of the voltage measurements;
- and
- comparing, by the monitor node, the unknown fingerprint to the plurality of learned fingerprints and thereby detect a comprised ECU.
A method for detecting a compromised electronic control unit (ECU) connected to a vehicle bus formed by two wires, comprising:
- storing, by a monitor node, a plurality of learned fingerprints in a data store accessible to the monitor node, where each fingerprint in the plurality of learned fingerprints is derived from voltage measurements made during transmission of a message on the vehicle bus by an ECU and uniquely identifies one of the ECUs connected to the vehicle bus;
- measuring, by the monitor node, voltage on the vehicle bus during transmission of a message on the vehicle bus, thereby yielding a plurality of voltage measurements;
- discarding a subset of the plurality of voltage measurements, where the voltage measurements in the subset correspond to an acknowledgement of the message;
- constructing, by the monitor node, an unknown fingerprint from remaining voltage measurements in the plurality of voltage measurements, where the unknown fingerprint is indicative of statistical dispersion of the voltage measurements;
- and
- comparing, by the monitor node, the unknown fingerprint to the plurality of learned fingerprints and thereby detecting a comprised ECU.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.