The Impact of Spoofing Attacks in Connected Autonomous Vehicles under Traffic Congestion Conditions

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) represent rapidly developing technologies. The majority of car manufacturing companies invest large amounts of money in the field of connected autonomous vehicles. Applications of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) relate to smart transport services and offer benefits to both society and the environment. However, the development of autonomous vehicles may create vulnerabilities in security systems, through which attacks could harm both vehicles and their drivers. To this end, CAV development in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) requires secure wireless communication. However, this kind of communication is vulnerable to a variety of cyber-attacks, such as spoofing. In essence, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of spoofing attack impacts under realistic road conditions, which may cause some traffic congestion. The novelty of this work has to do with simulation scenarios that take into consideration a set of cross-layer parameters, such as packet delivery ratio (PDR), acceleration, and speed. These parameters can determine the integrity of the exchanged wave short messages (WSMs) and are aggregated in a central trusted authority (CTA) for further analysis. Finally, a statistical metric, coefficient of variation (CoV), which measures the consequences of a cyber-attack in a future crash, is estimated, showing a significant increase (12.1%) in a spoofing attack scenario.