Arslan Munir

NSF CRII: CPS: Design of Secure and Dependable Next Generation Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems


    Duration: April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2019 (Estimated)
    Total Award Amount: $174,440
    Investigator(s): Arslan Munir (Principal Investigator)
    Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award Abstract


The next generation of automobiles will further escalate the proliferation of electronic control units (ECUs) to enable new and exciting control and infotainment applications. Although the use of electronic embedded systems improves performance, driving comfort, safety, and economy for the customer; this electronic control of automotive systems makes these systems susceptible to permanent, transient, and intermittent electronic failures, which can significantly reduce the reliability and availability of these systems. In addition, recent work has demonstrated vulnerability of modern car control systems to security attacks that directly impact the automobile's physical safety and dependability. The novel aspect of this research program is the simultaneous integration of security and dependability while minimizing energy consumption and ensuring that real-time constraints of the application are not violated. The dependability and security approaches proposed in this project are also applicable to other CPS, such as transit and aerial vehicles, industrial automation, and medical monitoring. Energy-efficient security and dependability integration, as pursued in this research program, further implies greater fuel-efficiency for combustion engine vehicles (in particular, aerial vehicles) and longer battery lifer for hybrid and electric vehicles.

To address the research challenge of simultaneous security and dependability integration while minimizing energy consumption, this research program proposes to leverage multicore ECUs to achieve high reliability with low energy-overhead for automotive safety-critical functions. The research program consists of two modular but inter-linked thrusts. In the first thrust, the project aims to develop a novel dependability methodology that would enable quick error detection and correction (QEDC) via an optimized combination of comparison-points and lightweight checkpointing to better meet the application's real-time constraints even in the presence of faults. The proposed dependability methodology aspires to attain energy-efficient fault tolerance by an intelligent use of dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS). The second thrust aims to develop an integrated safety and security methodology that would integrate security primitives: confidentiality, integrity, and authentication over vehicular networks in an energy-efficient manner without violating the real-time constraints imposed by the maximum tolerable response time of cyber-physical applications. The project further aims to adapt safety and security parameters (e.g., number of comparison points for QEDC, number of checkpoints, key lengths for cryptographic algorithms and message authentication codes) to meet the application’s real-time requirements under changing environmental stimuli (e.g., transient fault rate and vehicular bus load).


Publications Produced as a Result of this Research


    2019
  • Dalton A. Hahn,Arslan Munir, and Saraju P. Mohanty, "Security and Privacy Issues in Contemporary Consumer Electronics", IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Magazine, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 95-99, January 2019.   PDF

    • 2018
  • Bikash Poudel and Arslan Munir, "Design and Evaluation of a Reconfigurable ECU Architecture for Secure and Dependable Automotive CPS", IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2018 (accepted for publication).   PDF

  • Arslan Munir and Farinaz Koushanfar, "Design and Analysis of Secure and Dependable Automotive CPS: A Steer-by-Wire Case Study", IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2018 (accepted for publication).   PDF

  • Bikash Poudel and Arslan Munir, "Design and Evaluation of a PVT Variation-Resistant TRNG Circuit", Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), Orlando, Florida, October 2018. (acceptance rate: 29%)   PDF

  • Vahid Behzadan and Arslan Munir, "Adversarial Exploitation of Emergent Dynamics in Smart Cities", Proc. of IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), Kansas City, Missouri, September 2018.   PDF

    • 2017
  • Arslan Munir, Prasanna Kansakar, and Samee U. Khan, "IFCIoT: Integrated Fog Cloud IoT: A novel architectural paradigm for the future Internet of Things", IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Magazine, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 74-82, July 2017.   PDF

  • Bikash Poudel, Naresh Kumar Giri, and Arslan Munir, "Design and Comparative Evaluation of GPGPU- and FPGA-based MPSoC ECU Architectures for Secure, Dependable, and Real-Time Automotive CPS", Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP), Seattle, Washington, July 2017. (acceptance rate: 29.8%) — Selected as Best Paper Finalist (one of the top three papers in IEEE ASAP, 2017)   PDF

  • Bikash Poudel, Sushil J. Louis, and Arslan Munir, "Evolving Side-Channel Resistant Reconfigurable Hardware for Elliptic Curve Cryptography", Proc. of IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain, June 2017.   PDF

  • Arslan Munir, "Safety Assessment and Design of Dependable Cybercars: For today and the future", IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Magazine, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 69-77, April 2017.   PDF

  • Bikash Poudel and Arslan Munir, "Design and Evaluation of a Novel ECU Architecture for Secure and Dependable Automotive CPS", Proc. of IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), Las Vegas, Nevada, January 2017. (acceptance rate: 34.8%)   PDF


    • 2016
  • Arslan Munir and Farinaz Koushanfar, "Design and Performance Analysis of Secure and Dependable Cybercars: A Steer-by-Wire Case Study", Proc. of IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), Las Vegas, Nevada, January 2016. (acceptance rate: 32%)   PDF

  • Arslan Munir and Farinaz Koushanfar, "D2CyberSoft: A Design Automation Tool for Soft Error Analysis of Dependable Cybercars", Proc. of IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), Las Vegas, Nevada, January 2016. (acceptance rate: 32%)   PDF

  • Media Appearances and News Coverage


  • News Coverage: "University of Nevada, Reno's Cybersecurity Center presents design for faster, safer automotive systems", Telematics News, UK, Reported on February 22, 2017.

  • Published & Broadcasted Interview: Arslan Munir, "UNR researchers developing secure systems for autonomous cars", KOLO-8 News (ABC-affiliate television station for Western Nevada), Published and Broadcasted on February 21, 2017.

  • News Coverage: "University of Nevada, Reno's Cybersecurity Center develops faster, safer systems for autos, trucks, UAVs and buses", Northern Nevada Business Weekly, Reported on February 13, 2017.

  • News Coverage: "Could your car be hacked? Smart cars pose cybersecurity concerns", Nevada Today, Reported on February 10, 2017.