Towards a Cybersecurity Testbed for Agricultural Vehicles and Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces STAVE, a cybersecurity testbed designed to identify vulnerabilities in agricultural vehicles and environments, addressing the gap in research on securing modern connected farming systems.

Contribution

The paper presents the development of STAVE, a novel testbed for assessing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in agricultural systems using off-the-shelf components.

Findings

Initial cybersecurity experiments identified vulnerabilities in wireless components.

Vulnerabilities found in Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus systems.

STAVE aids in systematic security assessment of agricultural machinery.

Abstract

In today's modern farm, an increasing number of agricultural systems and vehicles are connected to the Internet. While the benefits of networked agricultural machinery are attractive, this technological shift is also creating an environment that is conducive to cyberattacks. While previous research has focused on general cybersecurity concerns in the farming and agricultural industries, minimal research has focused on techniques for identifying security vulnerabilities within actual agricultural systems that could be exploited by cybercriminals. Hence, this paper presents STAVE - a Security Testbed for Agricultural Vehicles and Environments - as a potential solution to assist with the identification of cybersecurity vulnerabilities within commercially available off-the-shelf components used in certain agricultural systems. This paper reports ongoing research efforts to develop and refine the STAVE testbed, along with describing initial cybersecurity experimentation which aims to identify security vulnerabilities within wireless and Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus agricultural vehicle components.