  Previous research works have endorsed the use of delays and clock skews for
detecting intrusions or fingerprinting ECUs on the CAN bus. Similar techniques
have been also proposed for establishing a time-covert cryptographic
authentication channel, in this way cleverly removing the need for
cryptographic material inside the limited payload of CAN frames. The main
shortcoming of such works is the limited security level that can be achieved
under normal CAN-bus traffic. In this work we endeavour to test the limits of
the achievable security level by relying on optimization algorithms for
scheduling CAN frames. Under practical bus allocations that are based on
real-world scenarios, we are able to extract around 4--5 bits of authentication
data from each frame which leads to an efficient intrusion detection and
authentication mechanism. By accumulating covert channel data over several
consecutive frames, we can achieve higher security levels that are in line with
current security demands. To prove the correctness of our approach, we present
experiments on state-of-the-art automotive-grade controllers (Infineon Aurix)
and bus measurements with the use of industry standard tools, i.e., CANoe.

Cryptography and Security;Networking and Internet Architecture