Catch ID if You CAN: Dynamic ID Virtualization Mechanism for the Controller Area Network

Abstract

The controller area network (CAN) is the most widely used in-vehicle network to communicate among electronic control units. However, the CAN does not provide security functionalities, such as encryption or message authentication. Attackers can analyze CAN logs and inject valid messages based on the analysis to cause malfunctions. Thus, security functions appropriate to the CAN environment are required to prevent attacks. In this paper, we propose a dynamic identifier (ID) virtualization method that prevents CAN logs from being analyzed and makes it difficult for attackers to generate valid messages. We implement a virtualization module to perform dynamic ID virtualization and measure the delay and computational overhead caused by the proposed method. Additionally, we demonstrate the security of the proposed method.