Simulating Malicious Attacks on VANETs for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles

In recent years, the automotive industry has witnessed remarkable technological advancements. Modern vehicles have become increasingly connected and autonomous, serving as the cornerstone for the development of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) and the implementation of future Smart Cities. This necessitates the employment of hundreds of Electronic Control Units (ECUs), a growing number of in-vehicle Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), and the adoption of new wireless communication technologies that support the deployment of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). This phenomenon has garnered the interest of researchers worldwide who have conducted various case studies on unaltered passenger vehicles, demonstrating the feasibility of remotely compromising safety-critical ECUs. The resulting approach highlights how exploiting a chain of vulnerabilities, from a wireless entry point to safety-critical ECUs, might allow remote control of the vehicles. Indeed, with the advent of inter-vehicle communication (IVC) technologies, today's vehicles are equipped with vehicle-to-everything (V2X) wireless interfaces, such as Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) for the ETSI ITS-G5 standard, which is responsible for expanding the vehicle's remote attack surface. Additionally, due to cooperative driving automation that grants partial or complete control of the vehicle to V2X Applications, there is an increased impact on the safety of passengers and Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) in the case of both in-vehicle and V2X security threats. Originating from these problems, this thesis work aims to demonstrate a possible implementation of realistic malicious attacks on VANETs, compliant with the ETSI ITS-G5 standard and based on the Artery open-source V2X Simulation Framework. The thesis also proposes a feasibility evaluation of the simulated malicious attacks in the presence of VANET with secured ITS communications and validates these attacks on the FEV Hardware in the Loop (HiL) platform, which is equipped with the CohdaWireless MK5 device.