Consumers demand more convenience features for their cars. Present passive keyless entry and keyless go systems are based on communications taking place in part using low frequency magnetic induction technology and in part using VHF or UHF radio communications. The proposed secure car access system will add wireless distance bounding technologies in an attempt to identify and prevent certain types of malicious attacks on these systems. Present day car access systems have been demonstrated to be vulnerable to a family of attacks known as “relay attacks”.
In order to provide secure access capabilities to the car manufacturers and ultimately to the consumers a technology is required to both identify and defend successfully against such attacks. Distance bounding between car and car key has been proposed as an effective defence to ensure a “secure” and “trustable” wireless solution.
We propose to address the challenges with the following objectives:
Develop a radio communications based distance bounding sub-system as an extension to a commercial passive keyless entry system.
Demonstrate the immunity of the proposed solution against selected malicious attacks.
Choose system parameters for the distance bounding sub-system such that the chances of success for a malicious user are minimized.
