Enhanced Safety and Security Features for CAN Communication in Automotives

Abstract

CAN is the widely used protocol in the automotive sector mainly because of its robustness. The proposed methodology focuses on enhancing the safety and security of the CAN. Short circuit or an interrupt occurring on a CAN_H or CAN_L line, during the waiting period of the critical data, leads to a catastrophic failure of the system demanding alternative solution for data transmission. In addition to data transmission, there exists a need for CAN data security. CAN is a multi-master kind of a network, wherein any node or ECU can transmit the data at any point of time if the bus is idle. So, there is no master in the network to monitor the different nodes connected. When someone wants to intentionally steal the data or corrupt the most crucial data which might result in catastrophic failure of the system like sensors calibration data as it is tuned for its best performance and if the sensor data is wrongly set then vehicle stability is at stake and might trigger an undesirable result. This can be done by unauthorized users or by competitors. A two bits alive counter, three bits source address, a three bits destination address, and a secure byte have been added to the data field by encrypting using RC4 algorithm to make the data safe and secure. Thus, an alternate solution to overcome associated security is proposed providing additional safety and security.