Code-Based Authentication Scheme for Lightweight Integrity Checking of Smart Vehicles

The stable and seamless connection of the mobile communication system is expected to closely link an unprecedented number of things, including smart cars such as autonomous vehicles, in the near future. These vehicles will operate based on the data transmitted over hundreds of sensors. However, an attacker could remotely control a car by intercepting and tampering with these data, and even threaten the life of the driver. In this paper, we propose a code-based authentication scheme that provides both secure booting and lightweight data integrity checking to prevent unauthorized remote control. First, we split some of the core code involved in booting the car, and divide it into several secret pieces known as a share polynomial. One of these is distributed to the driver and is then used to reconstruct the booting code, allowing only the driver with this share polynomial to recover the code and start the car. The remaining share polynomials are distributed to the vehicle control unit and used to generate a lightweight pairwise key. Since the proposed scheme requires only multiplication to generate the pairwise key, it is computationally efficient compared to conventional schemes that require expensive exponential computation. Additional communication is not required to set up the pairwise key, because it needs nothing but the id value of the partner. Thus, our scheme is highly suitable for low-performance devices inside the car. We used the Robot OS system, a widely used autonomous vehicle platform, to implement the proposed scheme and evaluated its feasibility on various test cases.