UltraSoC and Canis Labs team up to make CAN bus more secure

UltraSoC and Canis Automotive Labs have announced a collaboration to address one of the most serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the automotive industry: the lack of security features within the CAN bus, which is commonly used to connect on-board systems such as brakes, steering, engine, airbags, door locks and headlights.

The collaboration between the two companies will bring hardware-based intrusion detection and mitigation technology to prevent and control common attacks on the CAN bus, including automatic hardware anti-spoofing, protection against bit-level attacks (such as Bus-Off attacks and bit glitches), and protection against Denial of Service (DoS) type attacks. The focus of the collaboration is the deployment of Canis Labs' CAN-HG technology, a new and fully compatible enhancement to the standard CAN bus protocol that includes bus protection security features and other advantages, allowing it to carry a payload 12 times larger than the standard CAN frame.

When combined with UltraSoC’s semiconductor intellectual property (IP) to detect and mitigate cyber threats, CAN-HG enables designers to ensure the security of their CAN bus designs at the hardware level. The information security features enabled by this collaboration use fast bits within the CAN-HG enhanced part of the CAN frame to add security information to the CAN frame. Protocol-aware monitoring hardware provided by UltraSoC can use this feature to identify and block suspicious or unauthorized data flows transmitted over CAN. These new features will be refined and validated for deployment as part of Secure-CAV: a major project aimed at improving the safety and security of future connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).

Aileen Ryan, Chief Strategy Officer at UltraSoC, commented: “Automotive cybersecurity requires an ecosystem-based systems approach. We are delighted to add Canis Labs to our roster of partners in this space, which includes NSITEXE-DENSO and Agile Analog; and our partners in the Secure-CAV project, including Copper Horse and the Universities of Coventry and Southampton. Until now, the industry has been forced to use patched solutions to provide defence for CAN interconnects, relying on software techniques or perimeter security; by integrating Canis Labs’ innovative CAN-HG technology into UltraSoC’s products, we will be able to secure the vehicle ‘from the inside out’ in the underlying electronic hardware.”

Ken Tindell, CTO at Canis Labs, added: “The most effective way to protect the CAN bus from attacks is to deploy a hardware-based security device – or better yet, to integrate hardware protection into the underlying system using semiconductor intellectual property (IP). We believe that the combination of UltraSoC and Canis Labs’ IP provides a powerful solution for CAN bus security, which is one of the most pressing issues for any CAN bus user, whether they are in automotive, aerospace or any other industry.”

CAN is a very successful interconnection protocol that emerged in the 1980s in response to the need for an efficient, lightweight interconnection method that could cope with the harsh environment in vehicles. Today, it remains a popular choice not only in the automotive industry, but also in industrial, cyber-physical and robotic applications where safety is critical. Although CAN is powerful at the physical layer, it has almost no cyber-security features.

大多数现有保护CAN安全的方法都是基于软件的，这意味着它们通常无法足够快速地做出反应来防止协议层面的攻击。由于其技术都是基于硬件的，因而Canis Labs / UltraSoC的联合解决方案能够足够迅速地做出反应，以防止攻击完成。这有两方面含义：首先，许多漏洞攻击依赖于创建一个“机会窗口”，在此期间系统处于一种易受攻击或未知的状态。快速的反应时间可以消除这个窗口，显著提高信息安全防御的整体可靠性。其次，CAN总线被用于许多信息物理系统中，而在这些系统中持续的时间意味着继续运动的距离。因此，更快的响应时间在减轻恶意入侵的物理后果、更好地保护公民和基础设施安全等方面具有巨大的优势。