Privacy and cybersecurity elements for operational C-ITS
Cybersecurity research is continually progressing across all fields, and with this progress come increasingly complex cybersecurity challenges, especially in areas employing new technology or using old technology in new settings. A co-operative intelligent transport system (C-ITS) fits into both these categories, as it blends new technology found in vehicles with existing traffic management systems.
Within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute-defined C-ITS standards suite, this project aims to investigate:
- The choice of technical options required to remain within the Australian privacy legislation;
- A proposed mapping between “roles” and “permissions” across the road transport environment; and
- Practical cybersecurity incident detection techniques across a C-ITS environment.
Project background
Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) is a standardised mechanism to transfer real-time transport information between transport actors. For example, hazard detection and manoeuvre messenger. It is also referred to as V2V, V2I or V2X.
C-ITS may be a significant contributor to the success and development of safer roads, as well as autonomous vehicles and traffic control systems. As C-ITS represents a great opportunity for the transport sector, it is important that the early stages of C-ITS projects inspire participant confidence in the reliability, safety and privacy of these new technologies.
ITS have unique requirements and operating environments. Due to the nature of highly mobile agents, short-term connections, and the requirement to rapidly and broadly exchange messages, the security mechanisms in the radio transmission, 802.11p (IEEE 802.11-2012) are deliberately limited. As such, the onus for message verification and authentication is moved to higher application layers in the ITS.
In protocols such as IEEE1609 – Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE), this higher layer security requires end-entities (EEs) to be registered with a Security Credential Management System (SCMS) and to receive encryption keys and certificates regularly.
As C-ITS applications and trials are rolled out around the world, threats from cyber-attacks must be considered. The potential exists for malicious actors to adversely affect the reliability, safety and privacy of these systems if they are not adequately protected against cyber security threats. As these projects are in their ‘early stages’ of adoption, cyber-attacks or privacy breaches could significantly impact the success of these projects and the future uptake of these emerging technologies.
C-ITS trials are currently being implemented on existing wireless network protocols. These protocols allow for highly connected and mobile agents (vehicles) to interact with each other as well as static traffic infrastructure devices (traffic lights, street signs etc). The nature of this type of communication means the system needs to operate in potentially ‘hostile’ (cybersecurity) environments.
Defending the C-ITS requires analysis of existing threats, examination of current industry and research experience from other projects around the world, and the development, implementation and testing of security procedures and protocols.
Related projects
This project will build upon the data generated and collected by the iMOVE Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) Pilot — Field Operational Test and Evaluation (1-002) and the C-ITS Pilot Security Credential Management System: Evaluation and Research (1-005). Where this data is unavailable or insufficient, simulated models will be used.
This C-ITS project was conducted in QLD / Ipswich. It collected detailed C-ITS and location data and studied the safety benefit of C-ITS technology. This data is available to research bodies that meet ethical and privacy requirements.
The SCMS project supported the 1-002 project and provided the C-ITS security system platform enabling the examination of performance, security and privacy elements of C-ITS. Privacy and misbehaviour (intrusion detection) elements were not examined through this previous project.
Project objectives
The main objectives of this project are to:
- Develop a process which defines enrolment of stations, roles, and role definitions for ITS;
- Develop a model to determine rotation frequency of station certificates which balances privacy, security and sustainability; and
- Develop a model which describes an intrusion detection and response system for deployment in C-ITS.
Please note …
This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!
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