IEEE 802.11p (WAVE) gains public attention on its sucurity issue

Is it be easy to hack a car? Will it be easier to hack a highway with IEEE 802.11p?

Reported by COMPUTERWORLD, the emerging IEEE 802.11p technology could become the weak point for the highway safety and toll collection system that working on top of it. Rob Havelt, director of penetration testing at security vendor Trustwave's SpiderLabs, pointed out the threats faced by the emerging Car2Car communication technologies in his briefings at Black Hat DC.

This is not the first time that the security issues of Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) or system alike are discussed. Actually, along with the academia research on Car2Car communication, security has been always studied, e.g. SEVECOM project. However, a perfect security solution for Car2Car is very hard to achieve, if it really exists.

Particularly interesting, the experts of the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) have developed the Linux driver module that can easily turn the COTS WiFi radio into IEEE 802.11p complying ITS transceiver on 5.9 GHz ITS band.

EU Project EVITA on Intrusion Protected Vehicular Applications

Trusted Cars

The newly launched EU-Project EVITA aims at the information security in vehicular communications, e.g. for the toll collection or safety applications.

In the future, vehicles would be able to warning the driver about approaching dangers by using wireless coommunication technologies. However, to have these application running available on the market, the probelm of information security has to be solved. The goal of EU-Project EVITA is "a system that can protect both safety relevant componets in the car and the communications among different units from manipulation", as stated by the project coordinator Dr. Olaf Henniger.  

The EU funds this 3-year project with 3.8 Million euro, and other cost are from the project partners.  The participants include: BMW Forschung und Technik GmbH, Robert Bosch GmbH, Continental Teves AG & Co. OHG, escrypt GmbH, EURECOM, Fraunhofer ISI, Fujitsu Services AB, Infineon Technologies AG, die Universität Löwen, MIRA Ltd., Institut TELECOM/ParisTech und TRIALOG.

Original release (in German): : http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/pressedownloads/pressemitteilungen/20080819.jsp 

EVITA poject Website:

http://evita-project.org/