How Does Distributed Denial of Service Affect the Connected Cars Environment?

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are among the most insidious cyberattacks targeting any networking system. In the Internet domain, these attacks have demonstrated the capability of bringing down most systems for extended periods. In recent years, researchers have been exploring and simulating DDoS attacks against connected car systems. However, these simulated attacks have primarily employed messages from the Internet domain rather than leveraging the messages exchanged between connected vehicles. This paper presents a novel study that investigates the impact of DDoS attacks employing Cooperative Awareness Messages (CAMs), which serve as fundamental safety messages for establishing awareness in the connected car environment. The results obtained reveal that our attack exerts a significant, silent, and stealthy impact on connected cars. While the system remains operational, the quality of the services it provides (e.g., data collection and vehicle cooperation) is severely compromised. This highlights the vulnerability of connected cars to these attacks and underscores the need for robust mitigation strategies.