SaFe: A Blockchain and Secure Element Based Framework for Safeguarding Smart Vehicles

In the context of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), smart vehicles have become increasingly complex. Electronic Control Units (ECU) within smart vehicles are now capable of performing intricate operations which ensures reliable functioning of the smart vehicle even in emergency situations. However, these ECU(s) lack a trusted execution/storage environment (TEE/TSE). This makes it vulnerable to many security issues. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain and Secure Element(SE) based framework for smart vehicles called SaFe in which ECU(s) use SE for TEE and TSE. We justify the use of blockchain by showing how it securely facilitates application management on SE when ECU needs are changed. Leveraging on SaFe, we introduce the concept of non-repudiable responsibility. We present our realized framework and testbed based on NXP IMX6Q, Multos M5-P19, MultiChain. Finally, we show through our experimental results that how SaFe improves the performance of safety-critical operations within ECU by as much as 85%, all this while guaranteeing increased security, tamperproofness, immutability and reduced memory, storage, processing overhead.

[1]  Lei Sun,et al.  A Framework for Self-Verification of Firmware Updates over the Air in Vehicle ECUs , 2008, 2008 IEEE Globecom Workshops.

[2]  D. Hasan Jamak.  DIGITAL SIGNATURE ALGORITHM (DSA) , 2006 .

[3]  Hakim Badis,et al.  PulSec: Secure Element based framework for sensors anomaly detection in Industry 4.0 , 2019 .

[4]  Z. Chen.  Java Card Technology for Smart Cards: Architecture and Programmer''s Guide. The Java Series. Addis , 2000 .

[5]  Thomas F. Wenisch,et al.  Foreshadow: Extracting the Keys to the Intel SGX Kingdom with Transient Out-of-Order Execution , 2018, USENIX Security Symposium.

[6]  Alfred Menezes,et al.  The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) , 2001, International Journal of Information Security.

[7]  Kenneth R. Wilcox.  Multi-Application Smart Cards : Card Operating Systems and Application Security , 2005 .

[8]  Zhili Sun,et al.  Blockchain-Based Dynamic Key Management for Heterogeneous Intelligent Transportation Systems , 2017, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[9]  MultiChain Private Blockchain — White Paper , 2022 .

[10]  Salil S. Kanhere,et al.  BlockChain: A Distributed Solution to Automotive Security and Privacy , 2017, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[11]  Margaret Salter,et al.  Fundamental Elliptic Curve Cryptography Algorithms , 2011, RFC.

[12]  Armin Wasicek,et al.  Copy protection for automotive electronic control units using authenticity heartbeat signals , 2012, IEEE 10th International Conference on Industrial Informatics.

[13]  Yuan Yong,et al.  Towards blockchain-based intelligent transportation systems , 2016 .

[14]  Mohamed F. Younis,et al.  Efficient Distributed Admission and Revocation Using Blockchain for Cooperative ITS , 2018, 2018 9th IFIP International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security (NTMS).

[15]  Michael Hamburg,et al.  Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space , 2018, USENIX Security Symposium.

[16]  Kang G. Shin,et al.  Fingerprinting Electronic Control Units for Vehicle Intrusion Detection , 2016, USENIX Security Symposium.

[17]  Laurent George,et al.  BTCmap: Mapping Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Network Topology , 2018, 2018 IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Performance Evaluation and Modeling in Wired and Wireless Networks (PEMWN).

[18]  Pascal Urien.  RACS: Remote APDU call secure creating trust for the internet , 2015, 2015 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS).

[19]  Michael Hamburg,et al.  Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution , 2018, 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP).

[20]  Vrizlynn L. L. Thing,et al.  Autonomous Vehicle Security: A Taxonomy of Attacks and Defences , 2016, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData).

[21]  Satoshi Nakamoto.  Bitcoin : A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System , 2009 .

[22]  Adi Shamir,et al.  A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems , 1978, CACM.

[23]  Stuart Haber,et al.  How to time-stamp a digital document , 1990, Journal of Cryptology.

[24]  Pascal Urien.  Towards secure elements for trusted transactions in blockchain and blochchain IoT (BIoT) Platforms. Invited paper , 2018, 2018 Fourth International Conference on Mobile and Secure Services (MobiSecServ).

[25]  D.K. Nilsson,et al.  Secure Firmware Updates over the Air in Intelligent Vehicles , 2008, ICC Workshops - 2008 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops.