Source-linked AI summary
BlockChain: A distributed solution to automotive security and privacy
Ali Dorri, Marco Steger, Salil S. Kanhere, Raja Jurdak
TL;DR
Connected smart vehicles face security, privacy, and safety threats, including location tracking and remote hijacking. The paper proposes a distributed BlockChain-based automotive architecture using changeable public keys, local sensitive-data storage, and Overlay Block Managers, and qualitatively discusses its use for services such as wireless software updates. The architecture is presented as supporting secure data exchange and resilience against common attacks, while key management, caching, and mobility remain open challenges.
Problem
Connected smart vehicles expose sensitive data and vehicle-control functions to security, privacy, and safety threats.
Method
The paper proposes a distributed BlockChain-based automotive architecture with changeable public keys, local sensitive-data storage, and Overlay Block Managers.
Results
The architecture supports secure and trustworthy data exchange, protects user privacy, and is qualitatively argued to resist common security attacks.
Takeaways & Limitations
BlockChain is presented as a potential foundation for automotive services including wireless remote software updates and other emerging services.
Takeaways & Limitations
The architecture leaves key management, caching, application breadth, and mobility-related overhead as research challenges or future directions.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Interconnected smart vehicles offer a range of sophisticated services that benefit the vehicle owners, transport authorities, car manufacturers and other service providers. This potentially exposes smart vehicles to a range of security and privacy threats such as location tracking or remote hijacking of the vehicle. In this article, we argue that BlockChain (BC), a disruptive technology that has found many applications from cryptocurrencies to smart contracts, is a potential solution to these challenges. We propose a BC-based architecture to protect the privacy of the users and to increase the security of the vehicular ecosystem. Wireless remote software updates and other emerging services such as dynamic vehicle insurance fees, are used to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed security architecture. We also qualitatively argue the resilience of the architecture against common security attacks.
Introduction
Smart vehicles’ connectivity creates security, privacy, and safety risks, including remote vehicle control and exposure of sensitive location data. The paper presents BlockChain (BC) as a distributed technology suited to addressing these challenges.
- Introduction: Connectivity with roadside systems, nearby vehicles, and the Internet makes smart vehicles difficult to secure.A demonstrated Jeep Cherokee attack remotely controlled core vehicle functions through the infotainment system.
- Introduction: Remote compromise can endanger both vehicle security and passenger safety.Malicious software or attacks on autonomous-driving functions could cause serious accidents affecting passengers and nearby road users.
- Introduction: Existing communication architectures may expose vehicle data without the owner’s permission or provide only noisy or summarized data.Some services nevertheless require precise vehicle data for personalization.
- Introduction: Centralized cloud servers can become bottlenecks and single points of failure that disrupt the network.
- Introduction: BC provides distributed storage with security, immutability, and privacy properties relevant to automotive security and privacy.Its structure is presented in Figure 1.
Overview of LSB
The paper introduces LSB, a BlockChain instantiation optimized for large-scale, low-resource IoT networks. LSB replaces computationally intensive consensus puzzles with scheduled block generation and uses signed transaction formats validated by Overlay Block Managers.
- Overview of LSB: Conventional BlockChains face high processing and packet overhead, limited scalability, and low throughput.Bitcoin throughput is described as restricted to seven transactions per second because of consensus complexity.
- Overview of LSB: LSB replaces puzzle solving with scheduled block generation to eliminate conventional consensus processing overhead.Each node is permitted to store one block during a specified time interval.
- Overview of LSB: A single-signature transaction is valid when it contains the transaction generator’s signature.Its structure includes the current transaction ID, previous transaction ID, public key, and signature.
- Overview of LSB: A multisig transaction requires signatures from both the transaction generator and recipient.The format contains the public keys and signatures of both parties.
- Overview of LSB: Overlay Block Managers verify transaction signatures, retain valid transactions, and collate them into blocks of predefined size.Transactions are broadcast to all OBMs before validation and storage in a valid-transaction pool.
BlockChain-Based Architecture
The proposed architecture uses an overlay network and distributed public BlockChain managed by vehicles and ecosystem participants. It protects sensitive data through local storage, signed hashes, changeable keys, and transaction access control.
- BlockChain-Based Architecture: The overlay’s nodes can include smart vehicles, OEMs, assembly lines, software providers, cloud providers, and users’ mobile devices.Vehicles connect through a Wireless Vehicle Interface and local storage.
- BlockChain-Based Architecture: In-vehicle storage keeps privacy-sensitive data such as location and maintenance history under the user’s control.The vehicle can periodically transfer data to backup storage in the owner’s smart home when local capacity is limited.
- BlockChain-Based Architecture: Vehicles periodically record signed hashes of stored data in the BlockChain so later verification can detect changes.The transaction is sent to the vehicle’s associated OBM and stored in the BC.
- BlockChain-Based Architecture: Known-identity participants use public keys certified by a third-party certificate authority, while the remaining functionality is distributed.The architecture therefore retains centralized public-key infrastructure for this identity-verification aspect.
Applications
The paper applies the proposed BC architecture to automotive services, including wireless remote software updates. It frames these applications as benefiting from BC compared with existing methods.
- Applications: Table 1 summarizes the key benefits of BC compared with existing methods across the discussed automotive applications.
Remote Software Updates
Wireless remote software updates require secure, distributed access to vehicle control systems while preserving vehicle-owner privacy. The proposed architecture uses cloud storage and multisignature verification involving software providers and OEMs.
- Remote Software Updates: Wireless remote software updates modify ECU functionality or fix installed software bugs, requiring full access to embedded vehicle control systems.The paper describes WRSU as usable during development, assembly, servicing, or remotely from home.
- Remote Software Updates: Centralized update architectures, such as VPN-based updates, may not scale to very large numbers of smart vehicles and do not address privacy concerns.
- Remote Software Updates: Each OEM stores new software in cloud storage, with a vehicle-specific account associated with the vehicle.
- Remote Software Updates: The OEM verifies the new software version and signs the transaction, after which OBMs broadcast and verify the multisignature transaction using the included public keys.
Electric Vehicles and Smart Charging Services
Interconnecting electric vehicles with owners’ smart homes and mobile devices can support more personalized charging services by using travel-habit information.
- Electric Vehicles and Smart Charging Services: Smart-home and mobile-device connections can personalize vehicle charging using information about the owner’s travel habits.The passage gives calendar information as an example source of travel-habit data.
Car-sharing Services
Car-sharing services require secure, reliable communication among vehicles, service providers, and users. The proposed architecture supports trusted exchange of location, unlocking-key, and payment data.
- Car-sharing Services: Car-sharing services need secure and reliable interconnection among smart vehicles, service providers, and users.
- Car-sharing Services: A trusted communication channel is needed to exchange vehicle locations, car-unlocking keys, and user payment details securely.
Security and Privacy Analysis
The proposed architecture combines pseudonymous, rotating keys and in-vehicle storage with blockchain-based integrity, encryption, and access control. The authors also describe resistance to linking attacks and certain DDoS attempts.
- Security and Privacy Analysis: Each overlay node communicates using a unique public key, while fresh keys for each interaction help protect users against linking attacks.
- Security and Privacy Analysis: Vehicle owners retain privacy-sensitive data in in-vehicle storage and can reveal it to service providers when required, such as for an accident claim.
- Security and Privacy Analysis: Blockchain transaction hashes provide data integrity, asymmetric encryption provides confidentiality, and OBM key lists provide access control.
- Security and Privacy Analysis: A DDoS transaction without a matching key-list entry would be dropped and would not impact the targeted node.
Future Research Directions
The paper identifies key-management, caching, application expansion, and mobility as future research directions for the proposed architecture.
- Each vehicle’s multiple, changeable communication keys create a key-management research challenge.
- Caching data in OBMs could reduce packet overhead and delay when vehicles download cloud-provided software updates.
- The architecture’s broader applications, including congestion control, warrant further exploration.
- Frequent vehicle mobility increases handover-related packet and processing overhead, motivating mobility-friendly methods.
Conclusion
The paper proposes a distributed Blockchain architecture for automotive security and privacy, using changeable public keys and overlay-based access control to support secure services and address attacks.
- The proposed architecture uses Blockchain’s distributed nature to eliminate centralized control and enable automotive services.
- Changeable public keys protect user privacy, while OBMs control transaction access for their cluster members.
- The architecture supports secure data exchange and emerging automotive services while protecting end-user security.
- Automotive use cases illustrate applicability, and discussed attack scenarios show how the architecture can mitigate and inhibit attacks.
Biographies
The paper’s authors have backgrounds spanning IoT, automotive communication, network security, pervasive computing, distributed sensing, mobility, and energy research.
- Ali Dorri is a UNSW Ph.D. student researching security and privacy in IoT and smart vehicles, including Blockchain optimization for large-scale networks.
- Marco Steger is a senior researcher at VIRTUAL VEHICLE whose interests include dependable automotive communication, wireless security, and automotive software and control units.
- Salil Kanhere is a UNSW Associate Professor whose research includes IoT, pervasive computing, sensor networks, and security.
- Raja Jurdak leads CSIRO’s Distributed Sensing Systems Group and researches energy, mobility, and network security.
- The paper was accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazine and is subject to IEEE copyright.