Karamba Security, a provider of zero false positive autonomous cybersecurity solutions for connected and autonomous vehicles and FEV, a leader in the development and testing of electronics systems and subsystems for Advanced Driver Assisted Systems (ADAS), have partnered to demonstrate how their joint cybersecurity technology solutions can keep self-driving cars safe from hackers.
The demonstration will take place during CES in Las Vegas, Jan. 5-8, 2017, at FEV’s Bellagio Hotel suite. Karamba’s software enables electronic control units (ECUs) to autonomously protect themselves from hackers. It automatically hardens car ECUs, preventing hackers from compromising those ECUs and hacking into the car.
How Hackers Attack
Attackers try to inject malicious messages designed to modify a vehicle’s behavior, either by a local or remote attack. The industry responded by trying to use network anomaly detection systems, also called Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), that monitor the on-board communication bus (CAN) to detect anomalous messages, which may indicate an ongoing attack. The results, however, have been problematic, according to industry experts.
“These systems usually deploy heuristic methods, and hence raise false alarms (false positives) and miss attacks (false negatives),” according to Dr. André Weimerskirch, an industry expert in the field of vehicle electrical systems and cybersecurity, most recently with the University of Michigan and now vice president of Cyber Security with Lear Corp.’s E-Systems team.
In his presentation at the October TU 2016 Automotive Cyber Security Summit in San Francisco, Dr. Weimerskirch stated that as a result, it seems unreasonable to use any heuristic-based prevention in the vehicle in the near future. Since there will always be some false alarms, he argued, and if that were to trigger an active prevention, it might have an impact to safety relevant systems, without any on-going attack. Thus, anomaly detection systems do not replace prevention mechanisms, such as network separation, firewalls, and secure CAN, he concluded.
In 2016, Karamba Security emerged from stealth to solve this problem. Within three quarters, the company’s Autonomous Security product is being evaluated with eight different proofs of concept, and in the pipeline are dozens of other companies, owing to the advantages Autonomous Security brings to the car industry:
- A software solution that prevents cyber attacks with zero false positives, eliminating the risk of safety impacts
- No malware updates required
- Automatic policy generation with zero development efforts
“Detection is not enough, if the industry is going to put the brakes on hackers targeting connected and autonomous vehicles,” said Ami Dotan, CEO of Karamba Security. “The market shows strong interest in a solution aimed at prevention, with zero false positives, like Karamba’s Autonomous Security.”
