Tutorials

Giovanni Battista Gaggero - University of Genova, Italy
M d Arafatur Rahman - University of Wolverhampton, UK
Fabio Patrone - University of Genova, Italy

CyberVehiCare: An SDR-Driven Framework for Assessing Vulnerabilities in Automotive Cyber-Physical Vehicle Health Monitoring Systems

Software-Defined Radio (SDR) has emerged as a transformative tool in the penetration testing community, significantly influencing the methods and technologies used to evaluate the security of wireless communication systems. Traditionally, threats to these systems were limited to individuals with specialized knowledge or access to specific, often expensive hardware. This exclusivity made it challenging for independent third parties to thoroughly assess the security of automotive wireless communication solutions, particularly under constraints of time and resources.

The CyberVehiCare framework addresses this challenge by leveraging SDR technology to create a versatile, cost-effective solution for vulnerability testing in automotive environments. By integrating SDR into the penetration testing toolkit, it becomes possible to generate a wide array of targeted attacks across different wireless technologies using a single, adaptable hardware setup. SDR enables both passive and active attacks on multiple communication protocols by customizing parameters such as modulation, frequency, and data extraction from received packets, all with the aid of open-source software. During the course, potential mitigation strategies that can be put in place to mitigate the risk associated to the presented vulnerabilities will be discussed with participants. Some possible countermeasures that has been proposed by the authors in the reference use-cases will be also presented.

Giovanni Battista Gaggero - University of Genova, Italy

Giovanni Battista Gaggero is currently Assistant Professor at Department of Electrical, Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering and Naval Architecture of the University of Genoa. He got his MSc degree in electrical engineering and his Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Telecommunication engineering at the University of Genoa. His main research activity concerns Cyber Security of Industrial Control Systems, Microgrids, and Smart Grids. Gaggero is author of tens of publication in international journals and conferences, and of two patents. He is also founder and CEO AirFIELD

Security srl, a Spinoff of the University of Genoa that develops monitoring solutions for the cybersecurity and safety of industrial control networks

M d Arafatur Rahman - University of Wolverhampton, UK

M d Arafatur Rahman received his Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy in 2013. He has around 15 years Research and Teaching experience in the domain of Computer and Communications Engineering. Currently, he is a Reader in Cyber Security with the School of Engineering, Computing & Mathematical Sciences, University of Wolverhampton, UK. He was an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Computing, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, where he had conducted Undergraduate and Masters

Courses and supervised more than 21 B.Sc., 5 M.Sc. and 5 PhD students. He worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with University of Naples Federico II in 2014 and Visiting Researcher with the Sapienza University of Rome in 2016. His research interests include Internet-of-Things (IoT), Wireless Communication Networks, Cognitive Radio Network, 5G, Vehicular Communication, Cyber Physical System, Big Data, Cloud-Fog-Edge Computing, Machine Learning and Security. He has developed an excellent track record of academic leadership as well as management and execution of international ICT projects that are supported by agencies in the UK, Italy, EU and Malaysia. Dr. Rahman has received number of prestigious international research awards, notably the Best Paper Award at ICNS’15 (Italy), IC0902 Grant (France), Italian Government PhD Research Scholarship and IIUM Best Masters Student Award, Best Supervisor Award at UMP, Awards in International Exhibitions including Euro Business-HALLER Poland Special Award, MTE 2022, Best Innovation Award, MTE 2020, Malaysia, Diamond and Gold in BiS’17 UK, Best of the Best Innovation Award and Most Commercial IT Innovation Award, Malaysia, and Gold & Silver medals in iENA’17 Germany. Dr. Rahman has co-authored of around 100 prestigious IEEE and Elsevier journal (e.g., IEEE TII, IEEE TITS, IEEE TGCN, IEEE TSC, IEEE COMMAG, Elsevier JNCA, Elsevier FGCS etc.) and conference publications (e.g., IEEE Globecom, IEEE DASC, etc.) and has served as an Specialty Chief Editor of IoT Theory and Fundamental Research (specialty section of Frontiers in the Internet of Things), Advisory Board Member, Editor (Computers, MDPI), Lead Guest Editor (IEEE ACCESS, Computers), Associate Editor (IEEE ACCESS), Patron, General Chair, Organizing Committee, Publicity Chair, Session Chair, Programme Committee and Member of Technical Programme Committee (TPC) in numerous leading conferences worldwide (e.g., IEEE Globecom, IEEE DASC, IEEE iSCI, IEEE ETCCE etc.) and Journals. His name was enlisted inside the World top 2% scientists list released by Stanford University under the category of “Citation Impact in Single Calendar Year 2019-2021”. He was awarded a Higher Education Academy (HEA) Fellowship from the UK. He was a Fellow of IBM Center of Excellence and Earth Resources & Sustainability Center, Malaysia and is a Senior Member of IEEE. He was endorsed by Royal Academy of Engineering, UK as Global Talent under the category of “Exceptional Talent” in 2022.

Fabio Patrone - University of Genova, Italy

Fabio Patrone is an assistant professor in the Satellite Communications and Heterogeneous Networking Laboratory at the University of Genoa. His main research activity involves routing, scheduling, and congestion control algorithms in satellite, vehicular, and sensor net works, and the employment of networking technologies, such as network function virtualization and software defined networking for the integration of these networks with the terrestrial infrastructure within 5G.

Fabian Vargas - Senior Scientist, IHP - Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

On-Chip Infrastructure for Mission-Mode Monitoring of Resilient Systems: Towards Silicon Lifecycle Management

Simulation and laboratory measurements can never tell the whole story of how devices will behave in real-world use. In real world, various interferences can occur simultaneously, where the IC can be exposed, for instance, to extreme environmental temperatures, battery wear-out/instability, electromagnetic interference, ionizing radiation and aging. Moreover, there are many standards used to certify electronic circuits & systems, but they are applied independently (on fresh devices), not considering the combined effects one phenomenon may take over the other.

In this always-challenging context, this talk gives an insight on how IHP addresses the design of ICs through the use of on-chip cross-layer infrastructure, and how we can enable a range of new (in-field) optimizations throughout the lifecycle of the circuits. Such infrastructure deals with sensors to detect transient faults in memory elements, monitor power-supply bus activity, temperature, and measure electronics aging. Other types of monitors (watch-dogs) aim to guarantee mixed-criticality task execution in real-time operating system (RTOS). Embedded systems based on such watchdogs are assumed to be compliant with the ARINC 653 Std. This on-chip infrastructure is being implemented in different versions of a RISC-V processor, and manufactured with the IHP’s BiCMOS 130nm rad-hard technology. This solution enables mission-mode monitoring of IC operation, which is a critical aspect of silicon lifecycle management (SLM) framework.

Fabian Vargas obtained the Ph.D. Degree in Microelectronics from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG), France, in 1995. At present, he is Senior Scientist at IHP - Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics, Germany, where he works on the design of on-chip sensors and cross-layer resilience for lifecycle management of aerospace systems. Vargas has served as Technical Committee Member and Guest-Editor in many IEEE-sponsored conferences and journals. He holds several patents and published over 200 refereed papers. Vargas was researcher

of the BR National Science Foundation from 1996 to 2023. He co-founded the IEEE-Computer Society Latin American Test Technology Technical Council (IEEE LA-TTTC) in 1997 and the IEEE Latin American Test Symposium (LATS) in 2000. He received the Meritorious Service Award of the IEEE Computer Society for providing significant services as chair of these groups. Vargas is Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society and Senior Member of the IEEE.