Security Analysis of Ethernet in Cars

Abstract: With the development of advanced driving assistance systems, the amount of data that needs to be transmitted within a car has increased tremendously. Traditional communication bus based systems are unable to meet today’s requirements; hence automotive Ethernet is being developed and standardized. Ethernet has for many years been the de facto standard in interconnecting computers. In that time several vulnerabilities of the networking protocol stack implementations and even the protocols themselves have been discovered. The knowledge from exploiting computer networks can be applied to the automotive domain. Additionally, vehicle manufacturers tend to implement their own stacks, due to copyleft reasons; hence the chances of implementation faults increases as opposed to using well-tested open source solutions. Since the line between security and safety in cars is almost nonexistent, security has to be properly addressed. This thesis investigates the security of automotive Ethernet and its accompanying protocols. It starts with an introduction to computer and automotive networking and protocols. After a solid foundation is laid, it investigates what makes up automotive Ethernet, its application in the field, and the automotive specific components relying on it. After looking at related work, a data network security audit and analysis as defined by the open-source security testing methodology is performed. The system is graded with risk assessment values. Weak points are identified and improvements suggested. The impact of the proposed improvements is shown by reevaluating the system and recalculating the risk assessment values. These efforts further the ultimate goal of achieving increased safety of all traffic participants.