CAN-LOC: Spoofing Detection and Physical Intrusion Localization on an In-Vehicle CAN Bus Based on Deep Features of Voltage Signals

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is used for communication between in-vehicle devices. The CAN bus has been shown to be vulnerable to remote attacks. To harden vehicles against such attacks, vehicle manufacturers have divided in-vehicle networks into sub-networks, logically isolating critical devices. However, attackers may still have physical access to various sub-networks where they can connect a malicious device. This threat has not been adequately addressed, as methods proposed to determine physical intrusion points have shown weak results, emphasizing the need to develop more advanced techniques. To address this type of threat, we propose a security hardening system for in-vehicle networks. The proposed system includes two mechanisms that process deep features extracted from voltage signals measured on the CAN bus. The first mechanism uses data augmentation and deep learning to detect and locate physical intrusions when the vehicle starts; this mechanism can detect and locate intrusions, even when the connected malicious devices are silent. This mechanism's effectiveness (100% accuracy) is demonstrated in a wide variety of insertion scenarios on a CAN bus prototype. The second mechanism is a continuous device authentication mechanism, which is also based on deep learning; this mechanism's robustness (99.8% accuracy) is demonstrated on a real moving vehicle.