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USDOT Tier 1 UTC Transportation Cybersecurity Center for Advanced Research and Education (CYBER-CARE)

Cyber-CARE

Research Thrusts

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Thrust 1:

Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Cybersecurity research is a key component of the USDOT Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) research program. CYBER-CARE’s efforts shall address complex questions of ensuring future CAV safety in cyber environments: 

  1. Is it possible to use location to determine whether the information provided by a vehicle is reliable?
  2. All messages received from various devices require validation, so how can scalability be improved when the number of devices/nodes increases?
  3. How can cyberattacks that result in accidents due to a breakdown of the internal software be detected and avoided?

Thrust 2:

AI Application and Transportation Data Security - Given the key role of data in transportation communications with inadequate cybersecurity detection, CYBER-CARE will address the challenging problem of identifying cyberattacks via big data analysis by looking at a couple of manageable sub-problems :

  1. How can cyberattacks against an open network or system that aim to compromise information or disable devices for personal gain be avoided?
  2. How can hackers be detected and prevented from gaining access to connected vehicles to steal money or personal information or compromise systems?
  3. Which identity and privacy metadata will be shared with unknown transportation participants in a cybersecurity incident?

Thrust 3:

Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) Cybersecurity - In highly dynamic, wide-area traffic scenarios, e.g., in Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), centralized communication frameworks are insufficient. CYBER-CARE will develop a decentralized communication framework and future transportation solutions to ensure participants’ security and safety by addressing the following needs : 

  1. Conflicts must be governed without rolling back to a centralized framework, so who should manage conflicts when all nodes are assumed to have similar rights?
  2. If each node in a decentralized framework is distinct (e.g., a key validation, communication, or data storage node, creating more vulnerability), how to protect multiple attack surfaces?
  3. How to optimize the process of data storage through sensors and in-vehicle cellular vehicle-to-everything (V2X) components?

Thrust 4:

Next-Generation Transportation Cybersecurity Systems - Protecting next-generation transportation cybersecurity systems is complicated due to their reliance on multiple sub-systems, including sensors, weather stations, and smart vehicle networks. CYBER-CARE will address this problem and create reliable, next-generation transportation cybersecurity systems in various ways:

  1. What are the appropriate models for evaluating the resilience of these systems against cybersecurity attacks on one or more sub-systems?
  2. How to use the proposed models to discover optimal attacks over a combinatorial space of possible attacks?
  3. In the case of the simultaneous occurrence of extreme events (e.g., power outages and hurricanes), what are critical components for increasing system resilience?