An Approach to using Honeypots in In-Vehicle Networks

An emerging trend among automobile manufacturers is to introduce wireless technology in the vehicles. By allowing wireless communication, real-time information exchange between vehicles as well as between infrastructure and vehicles becomes a reality. This communication allows for road condition reporting, decision making, and remote diagnostics and firmware updates over-the-air, creating a complex critical infrastructure involving vehicles, road-side equipment, and firmware issuers. Allowing external parties wireless access to the vehicle creates a potential entry-point for cyber attacks. Since the safety of the driver depends on correct vehicle operation it is of utmost importance that the in-vehicle network is sufficiently protected against attacks. If we can learn the attackers´ preferences, techniques, and weaknesses in existing systems, we can use this information to design security solutions for the in-vehicle network. In this paper, we present and discuss the use of honeypots as a means of collecting such attacker information. We show how to design a vehicle honeypot, how to gather data from attackers, and discuss how to process and analyze the gathered data. Furthermore, we provide a discussion where we highlight important issues related to using honeypots in vehicles.