1. Feasible Car Cyber
Defense
Arilou Information Security
Technologies LTD.

2. Arilou Technologies

3. General
• Intro to modern car
• The rising threat
• Current solutions
• Suggested solution

4. The modern car
• Sophisticated and computerized
• Decentralized electronic system
 Usually consists of dozens of computers (ECUs –
electronic control units) and sensors
 New functionalities – hundreds MBs of code
 Connected by one or more network segments
• Autonomous cars

5. The modern car

6. The rising threat
• ECUs controlled mechanisms
 Brakes
 Stability control
 Airbags
 …
• CAN bus connected
• Rising wave of cyber attacks

7. CAN bus protocol
• A protocol from the 80’s
• Very simple
• Not secured in any manner
 Priority according to ID
 Who is the sender?

8. Known attacks - TODO
•Disable an automotive using the internet
•Attack using wireless tire pressure sensors
•Attack using On-Star
•Attack using the infotainment system – gain
control over the vehicle

9. Attack motivation
• Access to the automotive internal
communication network
 Car theft
 Stealing personal data
 Extortion
 Damaging business competitors reputation
 …

10. Hacking a system
• Demonstrated by US researchers - hack using
RDS, Bluetooth and more
• Hack a widespread infotainment system using
hostile files
 With no prior knowledge
 No budget
 Goal: estimate the possibility of such scenario

11. Infotainment Hack
internet

12. Hacking process
• Understand inner working and get binaries
• Reversing the binaries – focus on input parsing
• Finding exploitable vulnerabilities
• Implementing the exploit

13. The result

14. Conclusion
Cars were designed for safety and
functionality – not for Security

15. The challenge
• Huge number of suppliers
• Lots of external interfaces
• Every cent counts
• Time critical communication
• Legacy systems
• Zero tolerance for mistakes

16. Possible solutions

17. Cryptography
• Confidentiality
• Integrity
• Authenticity
• Can solve some of the issues
 The automotive world is far from ideal for this

18. Cryptography Difficulties
• Key exchange and management
• Symmetric keys:
 Identical to all units – vulnerable
 Not identical – complicated to manage
• Asymmetric keys:
 Time and computing complexity – cost
 PK infrastructure needed
• Maintenance nightmare – for a mission critical solution
• Export restrictions
• The industry is too decentralized
• Does not solve vulnerabilities
 Exploit can use the crypto mechanisms to encrypt
 The more sophisticated the system the larger the attack surface

19. CAN bus firewall
• A rule based CAN bus Firewall
 Whitelist
 Rate limit
 Authentication
• Independent device
 Single non-expensive chip
 aftermarket or integrated SOC
 Military grade
 Thoroughly tested
• Architecture
 As general rule does not require redesign of ECU’s
software or vehicle’s network

20. Features
• Physical forms
 Standalone device with two CAN bus connections
 Integrated chip in an ECU
• Configuration
 CLI (RS-232) interface
 GUI
 Non volatile memory
• Protection
 Secure software
 Rule based filter
 Rate limit against DOS

21. ?Questions