SoK: Federated Learning for Intrusion Detection in Vehicular Networks

Abstract

Modern vehicular networks face an expanding attack surface across internal Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and external Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication. Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a decentralized paradigm to deploy Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) without compromising data privacy. However, the vehicular FL-IDS literature suffers from fragmented methodologies and unrealistic experimental setups. This paper presents a Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) that unifies the taxonomy of vehicular attack surfaces, evaluates FL topologies, and maps adversarial threats such as poisoning and inference attacks. By auditing over 60 publications, we identify recurring pitfalls: artificial IID data splits, reliance on trivial benchmarks, weak adversarial evaluation, and omission of real-time CAN constraints. Finally, we define a forward-looking research agenda and outline minimum benchmarking requirements necessary to transition vehicular FL-IDS from optimistic simulations to secure, real-world deployment.