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Modern vehicles house many advanced components; sensors and Electronic Control Units (ECUs) — now numbering in the 100s. These components provide various advanced safety, comfort and infotainment features, but they also introduce additional attack vectors for malicious entities. Attackers can compromise one or more of these sensors and flood the vehicle’s internal network with fake sensor values. Falsified sensor values can confuse the driver, and even cause the vehicle to misbehave. Redundancy can be used to address compromised sensors, but adding redundant sensors will increase the cost per vehicle and is therefore less attractive. To balance the need for security and cost-efficiency, we exploit the natural redundancy found in vehicles. Natural redundancy occurs when the same physical phenomenon causes symptoms in multiple sensors. For instance, pressing the accelerator pedal will cause the engine to pump faster and increase the speed of the vehicle.

In-vehicle infotainment (IVI) platforms are getting increasingly connected. Besides OEM apps and services, the next generation of IVI platforms are expected to offer integration of third-party apps. Under this anticipated business model, vehicular sensor and event data can be collected and shared with selected third-party apps. To accommodate this trend, Google has been pushing towards standardization among proprietary IVI operating systems with their Android Automotive platform which runs natively on the vehicle’s IVI platform. Unlike Android Auto’s limited functionality of display-projecting certain smartphone apps to the IVI screen, Android Automotive will have access to the in-vehicle network (IVN), and will be able to read and share various vehicular sensor data with third-party apps. This increased connectivity opens new business opportunities for both the car manufacturer as well as third-party businesses, but also introduces a new attack surface on the vehicle.