Penetration Testing a Simulated Automotive Ethernet Environment

Kenneth Truex

11:00am Monday, 9 October 2017, ITE 346

The capabilities of modern day automobiles have far exceeded what Robert Bosch GmbH could have imagined when it proposed the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus back in 1986. Over time, drivers wanted more functionality, comfort, and safety in their automobiles creating a burden for automotive manufacturers. With these driver demands came many innovations to the in-vehicle network core protocol. Modern automobiles that have a video based infotainment system or any type of camera assisted functionality such as an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) use ethernet as their network backbone. This is because the original CAN specification only allowed for up to eight bytes of data per message on a bus rated at 1 Mbps. This is far less than the requirements of more advanced video-based automotive systems. The ethernet protocol allows for 1500 bytes of data per packet on a network rated for up to 100 Mbps. This led the automotive industry to adopt ethernet as the core protocol, overcoming most of the limitations posed by the CAN protocol. By adopting ethernet as the protocol for automotive networks, certain attack vectors are now available for black hat hackers to exploit in order to put the vehicle in an unsafe condition. This thesis will create a simulated automotive ethernet environment using the CANoe network simulation platform created by Vector. Then, a penetration test will be conducted on the simulated environment in order to discover attacks that pose a threat to automotive ethernet networks. These attacks will be from the perspective of an attacker will full access to the vehicle under test, and will cover all three sides of the Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability (CIA) triad. In conclusion, this thesis will propose several ethernet specific defense mechanisms that can be implemented in an automotive taxonomy to reduce the attack surface and allow for a safer end user experience.