Wiggle: Physical Challenge-Response Verification of Vehicle Platooning

TL;DR

Wiggle is a physical challenge-response protocol designed to verify that a vehicle requesting to join a platoon is physically following it, enhancing security against remote attacks by linking digital identity to physical trajectory.

Contribution

The paper introduces Wiggle, a novel physical challenge-response protocol that verifies vehicle platoon membership by tying digital identity to physical movement, resistant to pre-recording attacks.

Findings

Wiggle effectively prevents remote adversaries from joining platoons.

The protocol resists pre-recording attacks and confirms physical proximity.

Wiggle ensures only physically following vehicles can join the platoon.

Abstract

Autonomous vehicle platooning promises many benefits such as fuel efficiency, road safety, reduced traffic congestion, and passenger comfort. Platooning vehicles travel in a single file, in close distance, and at the same velocity. The platoon formation is autonomously maintained by a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) system which relies on sensory data and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. In fact, V2V messages play a critical role in shortening the platooning distance while maintaining safety. Whereas V2V message integrity and source authentication can be verified via cryptographic methods, establishing the truthfulness of the message contents is a much harder task. This work establishes a physical access control mechanism to restrict V2V messages to platooning members. Specifically, we aim at tying the digital identity of a candidate requesting to join a platoon to its physical trajectory relative to the platoon. We propose the {\em Wiggle} protocol that employs a physical challenge-response exchange to prove that a candidate requesting to be admitted into a platoon actually follows it. The protocol name is inspired by the random longitudinal movements that the candidate is challenged to execute. {\em Wiggle} prevents any remote adversary from joining the platoon and injecting fake CACC messages. Compared to prior works, {\em Wiggle} is resistant to pre-recording attacks and can verify that the candidate is directly behind the verifier at the same lane.