CAREER: Towards Reliable and Quantum-resistant Connected Vehicle Security

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The number of people who die in motor vehicle accidents unfortunately increases every year with human error as a primary cause of serious crashes. To enhance roadway safety and efficiency through driver-assistance and automated-driving systems, cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) is the globally preeminent technology to support connected vehicle services, including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, and is set for expansion toward 6G cellular technology. In particular, V2V communication that allows vehicles to directly exchange messages beyond the perception range of on-board sensors has many tangible benefits to society with the potential to prevent a significant percentage of crashes, increase transportation system efficiency (reducing travel time, pollution, etc.), and enhance mobility for disadvantaged communities. Despite long-standing classical security protocols designed for C-V2X, however, this technology is vulnerable to imminent quantum attacks from emerging quantum computers threatening the “integrity” of safety-critical messages, and to denial-of-service attacks at the currently unprepared communication protocols hindering possible mitigations for those quantum attacks. Countering these attacks, separately or jointly, is challenging, a significant risk to the safety of the growing connected vehicle services and future autonomous ones, especially as current hardware (with 12-15 year life expectancy on vehicles) is inefficient at running post-quantum algorithms fast enough.This CAREER project refines and refocuses existing V2V communication and security protocols, without an overhaul, to support post-quantum algorithms, given the hardware and other practical limitations in the automotive industry. With novel security protocols and backward-compatible communication techniques to prevent, mitigate, and evaluate quantum attacks, this project transforms the current C-V2X ecosystem to become crypto-agile for a staged transition over the next two decades into a quantum-resistant one. The research and education agenda is framed around three thrusts: (1) Establishing a roadmap and a transition plan in designing specific interim security protocols for different stages of the transition (e.g., before and after compatible hardware is available); (2) Supporting post-quantum algorithms by optimizing the resource scheduling techniques at the MAC layer to accommodate more messages, and developing novel message sieving techniques at the physical layer to reduce the integrity verification loads on the security modules; and (3) Developing a unique prototype of a digital twin infused with software-defined radios by converting an open-source V2V security testbed to an interactive platform with interfaces to large-scale (NSF-funded) testbeds. As an integral part of this project, a digital twin will be used (instead of costly urban experiments) for comprehensive evaluation of the proposed techniques and development of a novel game for gamifying connected vehicle security education. It cultivates new interdisciplinary research among game design, wireless security, and the automotive industry, providing for synergistic research and education outcomes, and will also help broaden the impacts through inclusive mobility initiatives for disadvantaged (deaf and hard-of-hearing) communities and innovative educational pathways to train next generation of under-represented cybersecurity experts. The PI will disseminate new course modules, hands-on labs, and the new games through open-access lectures, academic/public exhibits, and various collegiate and K-12 competitions. The research outcomes will be shared with stakeholders for supporting safe innovations, standardization bodies (NIST, IEEE) for security standards, and 3GPP and automotive industry for 6G C-V2X specifications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.