Strategic Safety-Critical Attacks Against an Advanced Driver Assistance System

Abstract

A growing number of vehicles are being transformed into semi-autonomous vehicles (Level 2 autonomy) by relying on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to improve the driving experience. However, the increasing complexity and connectivity of ADAS expose the vehicles to safety-critical faults and attacks. This paper investigates the resilience of a widely-used ADAS against safety-critical attacks that target the control system at opportune times during different driving scenarios and cause accidents. Experimental results show that our proposed Context-Aware attacks can achieve an 83.4% success rate in causing hazards, 99.7% of which occur without any warnings. These results highlight the intolerance of ADAS to safety-critical attacks and the importance of timely interventions by human drivers or automated recovery mechanisms to prevent accidents.