Protecting America’s Roadways

If you have a connectivity feature in your car like GPS or Bluetooth, you could unknowingly help hackers infiltrate America’s transportation system and become an integral part of a cyberattack.

BLUEPRINT FOR CYBERTERRORISM

The alpha and the omega for any hacker is access. To damage America’s critical infrastructure, hackers look for areas of vulnerability — low-hanging fruit — where networks can be easily breached. Once the door opens, cyberterrorists insert code to disrupt the network itself, alter the function of connected computers and, in some cases, their hacking transcends the virtual to become physical, real-world acts of violence.

A cyberattack on our transportation infrastructure has this kind of cyber-to-physical spillover potential. The crossover point from cyberspace to terrestrial space could be your car’s computer.

While this may seem like the script of the latest “Jack Ryan” episode on Prime Video, there’s a three-fold reason internet-connected automobiles are attractive targets for transportation cyberterrorists. First, they are easy pickings. Second, cars present hackers with a large attack surface (millions are on American roads each day). Finally, an automobile is basically a computerized bomb on wheels.

HOUSTON ... WE HAVE A PROBLEM

In Houston, a coordinated transportation cyberattack might look like this: It begins at 6:30 a.m. when you get inside your car, put that steaming thermos of coffee into the cup holder, toss your purse or computer bag into the passenger seat, insert your phone into the dashboard clip, key the ignition, then flip on the radio — your normal daily work commute has begun — down the road you go to get on the Katy Freeway.

At the I-10 and 610 West Loop interchange, you’re going 60 miles per hour when suddenly the cruise control kicks on, the engine guns as if you just put the pedal to the floor, the speedometer inches past 100 miles per hour — pressing the brake doesn’t slow anything down. When you try the emergency brake, and it’s a big zero, panic sets in and your gut tells you something really bad is about to happen — because it is.

The steering feature you love that normally allows you hands-free driving turns the wheel: hard right. You collide with a car the next lane over, then at top speed smash into the highway’s concrete barrier. Vehicles in other lanes meet a similar fate.

You can think of Zhang and members of the consortium as the computer world’s version of the special forces.

By 7 a.m., cars on both the Katy Freeway and the West Loop are piled up, destroyed, some are flipped or on fire, airbags deployed and people are screaming. Below the overpass a tanker truck carrying hazardous material has flipped. Its toxic contents gurgle out onto the road. Every artery into, out of and around the city has halted. Emergency responders cannot get to the multiple scenes of devastation because the freeways are in gridlock.

In other parts of the city, hackers had set up mobile teams of terrorists speeding around on motorcycles — one driving and one on the back of the bike with a laptop. The group breached the traffic light network the night before, inserted malware and, with the bike teams racing around the city, they were ready to initiate a simultaneous attack to cripple all intersection traffic lights within a five-mile radius of the main attack.

All this occurs just as peak morning traffic begins when more than a million vehicles enter Houston’s highway system.

This is not only fictitious Jack Ryan’s world. Meet Yunpeng “Jack” Zhang, associate professor of computer information systems and information system security at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering and director of the CY- BER-CARE consortium. You can think of Zhang and members of the consortium as the computer world’s version of the special forces. Each member institution has its own specialty, and they all work together for one mission: Outthink the bad guys.

WHAT IS CYBER-CARE?

CYBER-CARE is an elite, multi-institutional, multidisciplinary group of computer scientists working to keep cyber threats from becoming real-world attacks on America’s transportation system. The acronym stands for Transportation Cybersecurity Center for Advanced Research and Education. The center is located at UH, which is the team lead, and its six members include UH, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Rice University, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, University of Cincinnati and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

“It’s a chess match of sorts, requiring the consortium to predict the future moves of transportation cyber terrorists.”
-Yunpeng “Jack” Zhang, director of the CYBER-CARE consortium

The group has been given a special designation by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) as a Tier 1 university center, of which there are only 10 in the entire country. According to the USDOT, it’s the best of the best, so much so that Tier 1 centers get top priority for grant funding. This includes around $12 million to CYBER-CARE, which has 20 different research projects currently underway.

The scope of the consortium’s research is to shape the future of transportation safety. The implications to America’s national security are profound. CYBER-CARE’s research is directed toward the USDOT’s primary objective: Protect the world’s leading transportation system, while keeping people and the economy moving. With each member contributing a unique set of skills, the CYBER-CARE consortium has four collective strike points.

Strike Point One: Prevent a cyberattack from destabilizing both human operated and driverless cars connected to the internet.

Strike Point Two: Utilize AI, protect open networks, secure storage sites for privacy data and coordinate the distribution of life-saving data if a cyber emergency does occur.

Strike Point Three: Develop decentralized computer frameworks to prevent system-wide destruction if major control centers are attacked.

The fourth and final strike point for CYBER-CARE is perhaps the most challenging, according to Zhang.

“It’s a chess match of sorts, requiring the consortium to predict the future moves of transportation cyber terrorists. To do this, we definitely explore advanced hacking tactics as well as potential attack patterns,” he says. “Our goal is to find and detect hostile infiltration to critical infrastructure before it happens and design applications that prevent acts of mass casualty and property damage.”

To this end, UH is leading five research projects and collaborating with consortium partners on eight others. Kailai Wang, assistant professor of supply chain and logistics technology, is creating a plan to understand how connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) fit into different kinds of streets and areas. Additionally, he is developing a standardized safety assessment framework for ensuring their safe coexistence with conventional vehicles as well as vulnerable road users.

A project led by Lu Gao, associate professor of construction management, delves into the analysis of the vulnerability landscape of connected vehicle-enabled traffic systems. He is focusing on the role of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) in their security architecture, particularly when hackers target the communication channels of multiple interconnected vehicles. The research aims to establish a comprehensive understanding of the potential cascading effects that could arise from such security breaches.

Zhang has two studies underway. The first aims to develop a detection algorithm that can quickly spot and stop hackers trying to jam traffic by flooding the advanced traffic management systems (ATMs) with too much data. It works on several levels to keep traffic control systems safe and uses a mix of research, new ideas and lots of real-time data to make this happen.

His second project is building a powerful security system that works well with different tech in traffic systems to stop different types of cyberattacks. It catalogues the history of past attacks to learn from them and creates a special model to control who can access important traffic data, making sure it's safe.

Zhu Han, Moores Professor of Electrical Engineering, is leading a research effort to improve the safety and intelligence of CAVs using blockchain and federated learning. It involves a central server coordinating with smart cars, each equipped with sensors, to collect and share data. The project aims to selectively combine the best data from these cars to create a more efficient and accurate overall system. Early results show promise for enhancing smart car collaboration and security.

THE FRONT LINE FOR CYBER SAFETY

CYBER-CARE’s task has taken on greater meaning than what we’ve seen from those security efforts previously reported in the media about preventing ransomware attacks for things like personal data theft. Why? Because with the current state of the world, infrastructure cyberterror and the possibility of a hybrid attack, human lives are at stake.

“Due to the number of people using transportation, an infrastructure security failure is a matter of public safety. There’s no questioning that anymore nor that there is a clear and present danger with new cyber threats,” Zhang says.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to agree with Zhang, because they’ve identified cyber threats to critical infrastructure to be one of the significant strategic risks going forward for the United States.

The first published reports of worldwide threats to transportation infrastructure began in the early 2000s. Since then, the attacks have grown in severity due to hostilities toward the U.S. from abroad coupled with the increased connectivity of critical infrastructure and our dependence on network communication. In fact, it’s now computers running control functions once managed by a person in a control center, along with human support staff out in the field.

Computer scientists like Zhang and members of the CYBER-CARE consortium are up against an ever-evolving, everchanging technological beast that never stops advancing. As quickly as hackers develop new attacks, Zhang and his colleagues develop counter technology to fortify infrastructure networks, hackers then move and shift again.

“Due to the number of people using transportation, an infrastructure security failure is a matter of public safety.”
-Yunpeng “Jack” Zhang, director of the CYBER-CARE consortium

“It never stops,” Zhang said. “24/7/365, the consortium is studying and creating the newest technology to make transportation safe for everyone.”

For those of us non-computer science experts who are on the outside looking in, we’re seeing technology change faster than anything humans have ever seen. Zhang acknowledges this, as well as the dangers ahead and the amazing possibilities to make positive changes to make the world a better, safer place.

“There’s uncharted territory we, as a society, are moving into. As a computer scientist and as a per- son who uses the transportation system, I see both sides,” shares Zhang. “What gives me confidence for the future is that the consortium is solid, and we, as the members of CYBER-CARE, are unquestionably ready for what lies ahead.”