EAGER: SARE: Collaborative Research: Exploring and Mitigating Attacks of Millimeter-wave Radar Sensors in Autonomous Vehicles

自动驾驶汽车（AVs）在改善道路安全、旅行体验和交通足迹以及所有人的机动性和可达性方面具有巨大的潜力。然而，近年来，自动驾驶汽车本身的安全性引发了许多担忧。由于自动驾驶汽车使用了大量的传感器，包括摄像头和雷达来检测、分类和跟踪道路上的物体和障碍物，它们的可靠性和弹性对自动驾驶汽车的安全性有着重要的影响。尽管针对自动驾驶汽车系统中摄像头和其他传感器的恶意攻击风险已经进行了研究，但人们对自动驾驶汽车中毫米波雷达传感器的脆弱性缺乏深入的了解。这个探索性研究（EAGER）项目旨在通过研究基于毫米波雷达传感器的系统的先进攻击和防御方法，探索提高自动驾驶汽车安全性和弹性的见解。由于这些雷达目前专门用于自适应巡航控制、盲点检测和防撞，因此该项目将使许多安全关键应用受益。pi计划扩大K-12和代表性不足的学生的研究机会，并通过国家夏季交通研究所（NSTI）、可持续交通与物流研究所（ISTL）和布法罗大学路易斯斯托克斯少数民族参与联盟（LSAMP）的教育计划，在扩大工程参与方面整合多样性。pi将通过出版物、讲座和演示等方式传播项目成果，并将研究材料整合到特定课程和教育课程中。所有新开发的研究和教学材料都将在项目网站上公开。该项目将首先证明，当自动驾驶汽车在路上行驶时，毫米波雷达传感器可以通过非合作的空中同步方法进行欺骗和干扰。能够准确识别目标雷达的频段、调制方案和波形模式，进行隐身攻击。该团队将进行概念验证演示，以攻击具有快速啁啾信号的现实AV雷达。其次，该项目将探索硬件和基于软件/算法的防御机制，以避免此类攻击，包括基于波束特征的物理层容量估计、机器学习物理识别、非合作无源前端架构和带限相干噪声雷达。该项目的创新之处在于不仅使用了基于自适应有限状态机的方法，结合了啁啾序列间和内部同步，而且还使用了数据建模技术来有效地调整攻击者的波形参数。此外，该项目是首批探索使用独特的辐射测量、噪声雷达和被动雷达作为有效防御自动驾驶汽车攻击机制的项目之一。该项目的研究重点将显著推进毫米波传感器的最新安全知识，并为开发更不可察觉、抗泄露和强大的AV雷达解决方案提供见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have significant potentials to improve road safety, travel experience and transportation footprint, as well as the mobility and accessibility for all. However, the safety and security of AVs themselves have raised many concerns in recent years. As AVs use a plethora of sensors, including cameras and radars to detect, classify and track objects and obstacles on the road, their reliability and resilience have significant impacts on AV safety. Although risks from malicious attacks targeted at cameras and other sensors in AV systems have been studied, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of the vulnerability of millimeter-wave radar sensors in AVs. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project seeks to explore insights to improve the security and resilience of AVs by investigating advanced attack and defense methods for millimeter-wave radar sensor-based systems. Since these radars are used exclusively today for adaptive cruise control, blind-spot detection, and collision avoidance, this project will benefit many safety-critical applications. The PIs plan to expand research opportunities for K-12 and underrepresented students, and integrate diversity in broadening participation in engineering through the educational programs of National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI), Institute for Sustainable Transportation and Logistics (ISTL) and Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) at the University at Buffalo. The PIs will disseminate the results of the project through publications, talks, and demos, and integrate research materials into specific courses and education curricula. All newly developed research and teaching materials will be publicly accessible on the project website. This project will first demonstrate that the millimeter-wave radar sensors can be spoofed and jammed while AVs are on the road through a non-cooperative over-the-air synchronization method. It can accurately identify the frequency band, modulation scheme and waveform patterns of victim radars to launch stealthy attacks. The team will conduct a proof-of-concept demo to attack real-world AV radars with fast-chirp signals. Second, the project will explore both hardware and software/algorithm-based defense mechanisms for avoiding such attacks, including beam feature based physical layer capacity estimation, machine learning physical identification, non-cooperative passive front-end architectures and band-limited coherent noise radars. The innovation of the project comes from not only the use of adaptive finite state machine based approaches that combine inter- and intra-chirp-sequence synchronization, but also data modeling techniques to efficiently adjust the attacker’s waveform parameters. Moreover, the project is among the first to explore the use of unique radiometrics, noise radars and passive radars as effective defense mechanisms against the attacks to AVs. Research thrusts in this project will significantly advance the state-of-the-art knowledge of the security of millimeter-wave sensors, and provide insights on developing more undeceivable, disclosure-resistant and robust AV radar solutions.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.