Vehicular Platooning in an Adversarial Environment

In this paper, we show that a single, maliciously controlled vehicle can destabilize a vehicular platoon, to catastrophic effect, through local modifications to the prevailing control law. Specifically, by combining changes to the gains of the associated law with the appropriate vehicle movements, the attacker can cause the platoon to oscillate at a resonant frequency, causing accidents that could result in serious injury or death. We determine the range of gains, and their corresponding frequencies, that allow an attacker to violate the string stability and stability criteria at different positions in the platoon. Furthermore, we prove that the attack can be successful at any position in the platoon and at frequencies that can be realized by the other vehicles in the platoon. Our work implies that neither the string stability nor stability conditions, when used singly, ensure proper platoon operation, and that neither can be used to ensure the other. Finally, we show that an attacker is theoretically capable of gaining control over the individual position and velocity (states) of other vehicles in the platoon; two attacks are demonstrated for this vulnerability.