"Professor Aims to Make Connected Vehicles More Reliable and Secure against Quantum Attacks"
The advanced wireless systems that make driver assistance and autonomous driving systems possible are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Hanif Rahbari, assistant professor of computing security at Rochester Institute of Technology, was recently awarded the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award and a grant of $600,000 to improve the security of connected vehicle technology. Through his five-year project titled "Toward Reliable and Quantum-resistant Connected Vehicle Security," Rahbari is developing and validating new protocols to protect the ecosystems for connected vehicles. In the future, the methods he develops will also protect wireless communications between vehicles from quantum-related attacks. Rahbari is creating a roadmap with interim security standards for a transition plan throughout the next two decades and at least two generations of cellular technologies (5G and 6G). In order to prevent and mitigate quantum-related attacks, his study will incorporate novel security protocols and evaluation tools enabled by backward-compatible communication mechanisms. The refined and refocused cellular vehicle-to-everything communication technology will be prepared for a future in which connected cars manufactured prior to the era of quantum computing will be able to defend themselves against future quantum attacks, including those designed to forge safety messages. This article continues to discuss Rahbari's work to bolster the resilience and security of connected vehicles.