Evaluating The Dedicated Short-Range Communication For Connected Vehicles Against Network Security Attacks

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are more than 5 million road crashes every year in the U.S. More than 90 people die in car crashes every day. Even though the number of people surviving crashes has increased significantly thanks to safety features, such as airbags and anti-lock brakes, many people experience permanent injuries. The U.S. Department of Transportation introduced connected vehicle technologies, which enables vehicles to "talk" to each other and exchange important data on the roads, with the goal of preventing crashes from happening in the first place. With the rapid development of autonomous driving technology, vehicles in the near future will be able to operate completely without human drivers, increasing the need of reliable connected vehicle technologies. Due to the safety-critical characteristics of autonomous vehicles, it is important to evaluate the technologies extensively prior to deployment to ensure the safety of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. In this paper, we evaluate the safety of Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC), which is a popular low-latency wireless communication technology specifically designed for connected vehicles. We present three real-world network security attacks and conduct experiments on real DSRC-supported modules. Our results show that DSRC is vulnerable to these dangerous attacks and such attacks can be easily implemented by adversaries without significant resources. Based on our evaluation, we also discuss potential countermeasures to better improve the security and safety of DSRC and connected vehicles.