The exchange of information in a timely fashion is critical to accident prevention in transportation systems. Research has demonstrated that anticipating future collisions by as little as half a second before impact could lead to a 60% decrease in traffic accidents. Moreover, in July of 2015, researchers demonstrated a remote exploit of a commercially available vehicle from 10 miles away while it was on the highway, leading to the recall 1.4 million vehicles; this represents the first known automotive recall due to a cybersecurity vulnerability. However, the exchange of information also makes vehicular networks prone to security-related issues.

The PIs have been exploring the security aspects of systems which exist within a single vehicle as part of a University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) funded research effort. The topic of this proposal is a separate but complementary investigation into the security aspects of communication networks which connect vehicles to other vehicles and infrastructure. We seek to expand the scope of our research in order to develop secure data sharing and aggregation algorithms for transportation systems.