LASER: lightweight and secure remote keyless entry protocol

Abstract

Since Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) systems started to be widely used, several vulnerabilities in their protocols have been found. Attacks such as jamming-and-replay attacks and relay attacks are still effective against most recent RKE systems (Ibrahim et al., 2018), even when many secure schemes have been designed. Although they are interesting from a theoretical point of view, the complexity of these solutions is excessive to implement them into a fob (Karani et al., 2016). This paper presents a lightweight and general solution based on a one message protocol, which guarantees the integrity and validity of the authentication in RKE systems, protecting the communication against the well-known jamming-and-replay and relay attacks, without using complex cryptographic schemes. Moreover, we also adapt our protocol for passive RKE (PRKE) systems. Our solution also includes a novel frequency-hopping-based approach which mitigates deny-of-service attacks. Finally, a prototype has been implemen ted using non-expensive hardware. Obtained results assure scalability, effectiveness and robustness.