Modern auto-vehicles are built upon a vast collection of sensors that provide large amounts of data processed by dozens of Electronic Control Units (ECUs). These, in turn, monitor and control advanced technological systems providing a large palette of features to the vehicle’s end-users (e.g., automated parking, autonomous vehicles). As modern cars become more and more interconnected with external systems (e.g., cloud-based services), enforcing privacy on data originating from vehicle sensors is becoming a challenging research topic. In contrast, deliberate manipulations of vehicle components, known as tampering, require careful (and remote) monitoring of the vehicle via data transmissions and processing. In this context, this paper documents an efficient methodology for data privacy protection, which can be integrated into modern vehicles. The approach leverages the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as a core data transformation algorithm, accompanied by filters and additional transformations. The methodology is seconded by a Random Forest-based regression technique enriched with further statistical analysis for tampering detection in the case of anonymized data. Experimental results, conducted on a data set collected from the On-Board Diagnostics (OBD II) port of a 2015 EUR6 Skoda Rapid 1.2 L TSI passenger vehicle, demonstrate that the restored time-domain data preserves the characteristics required by additional processing algorithms (e.g., tampering detection), showing at the same time an adjustable level of privacy. Moreover, tampering detection is shown to be 100% effective in certain scenarios, even in the context of anonymized data.

Data collected from sensor-rich systems may reveal user-related patterns that represent private information. Sensitive patterns from time-series data can be protected using diverse perturbation methods; however, choosing the method that provides the desired privacy and utility level is challenging. This paper proposes a new procedure for evaluating the utility and privacy of perturbation techniques and an algorithm for comparing perturbation methods. The contribution is significant for those involved in protecting time-series data collected from various sensors as the approach is sensor-type-independent, algorithm-independent, and data-independent. The analysis of the impact of data integrity attacks on the perturbed data follows the methodology. Experimental results obtained using actual data collected from a VW Passat vehicle via the OBD-II port demonstrate the applicability of the approach to measuring the utility and privacy of perturbation algorithms. Moreover, important benefits have been identified: the proposed approach measures both privacy and utility, various distortion and perturbation methods can be compared (no matter how different), and an evaluation of the impact of data integrity attacks on perturbed data is possible.

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) represent a complex series of techniques directed against a particular organization, where the perpetrator is able to hide its presence for a longer period of time (e.g., months, years). Previous such attacks have demonstrated the exceptional impact that a cyber attack may have on the operation of Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA), and, more specifically, on the underlying physical process. Existing techniques for the detection of APTs focus on aggregating results originating from a collection of anomaly detection agents. However, such approaches may require an extensive time period in case the process is in a steady-state. Conversely, this paper documents E-APTDetect, an approach that uses dynamic attestation and multi-level data fusion for the early detection of APTs. The methodology leverages sensitivity analysis and Dempster-Shafer’s Theory of Evidence as its building blocks. Extensive experiments are performed on a realistic Vinyl Acetate Monomer (VAM) process model. The model contains standard chemical unit operations and typical industrial characteristics, which make it suitable for a large variety of experiments. The experimental results conducted on the VAM process demonstrate E-APTDetect’s ability to efficiently detect APTs, but also highlight key aspects related to the attacker’s advantage. The experiments also highlight that the adversary’s advantage is affected by two major factors: the number of compromised components; and, the precision of manipulation.

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