Assessing Latency of Lightweight AEAD Algorithms in CAN †

Joshua Dean Copeland; Leonie Simpson; Geoffrey Walker

doi:10.53941/pc.2026.100007

Abstract

The CAN protocol does not include cryptographic security mechanisms. While older vehicles had physically isolated CAN networks; modern vehicles’ external connectivity can result in remote attack vectors as demonstrated by Miller and Valasek’s Jeep Hacking in 2015. Some proposals for cryptographically securing CAN transmissions use specialised hardware and/or use non-lightweight cryptographic algorithms. In this paper we consider the suitability of lightweight Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data algorithms for providing security to the CAN protocol. NIST held a lightweight cryptography standardisation process, announcing ten finalists in 2021, and selecting ASCON from the finalists in 2023. This work aims to evaluate softwareimplementations of these algorithms for securing the very short payload lengths of standard CAN frames, without requiring specific CAN variants and/or specialised hardware for longer payloads or cryptographic acceleration. This would enable implementation of CAN bus security on low-end existing vehicle MCUs via firmware, without hardware modification, by using such algorithms with any existing CAN protocols that use encryption and/or MACs. We tested by re-purposing Weatherly’s benchmarking software via modifying the test procedure to test shorter 4-byte payloads with authentication data in existing CAN frames. Low-end 8-bit 16 MHz and 20 MHz AVR processors are used for benchmarking, and results are used to rank finalists with respect to their time-efficiency advantage over AES-GCM.We also compare to encrypting the payload without including the ID and control bits as associated data to assess the performance impact of the associated data, and also compare to authentication-only use of the AEAD cipher where both the ID and payload are all processed as associated data to authenticate without encrypting. We find that several NIST finalists outperform AES-GCM in our testing of AEAD in the CAN data field. ASCON and TinyJAMBU are particularly time-efficient among nonce-misuse resilient finalists. If nonce-misuse resilience is not required, Schwaemm-128-128 has the best time-efficiency even against ASCON and TinyJAMBU variants, with this advantage being to an even greater extent in AD-based authentication-only results. The finalists’ varying results against AES-GCM, and some discussion about other aspects such as nonce-misuse resilience and code-size are discussed. We also found that the relative overhead of processing the ID as associated data ranges from 50% to less than 1% across the tested cipher variants. We also found that while most cipher variants are more efficient, and some have negligible difference, when processing the payload as associated data; there are cipher variants that are less efficient.

References

1.
Nolte, T.; Hansson, H.; Bello, L. Automotive Communications-Past, Current and Future. In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, Catania, Italy, 19–22 September 2005; Volume 1, pp. 8–992.
2.
Koscher, K.; Czeskis, A.; Roesner, F.; et al. Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile. In Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Oakland, CA, USA, 16–19 May 2010; pp. 447–462.
3.
Checkoway, S.; McCoy, D.; Kantor, B.; et al. Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces. In Proceedings of the 20th USENIX Conference on Security, San Francisco, CA, USA, 10–12 August 2011; p. 6.
4.
Valasek, C.; Miller, C. Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle. In Proceedings of the Black Hat USA, Las Vegas, NV, USA, 1–6 August 2015.
5.
Al-Mekhlafi, Z.G.; Alfhaid, S.A. Innovative Security Measures: A Comprehensive Framework for Safeguarding the Internet of Things. In AI-Driven: Social Media Analytics and Cybersecurity; Yafooz, W.M., Al-Gumaei, Y., Eds.; Springer Nature: Cham, Switzerland, 2025; pp. 175–185.
6.
Al-Mekhlafi, Z.G. Software-Defined Vehicular Networks (SDVN). Int. J. Comput. Sci. Netw. Secur. 2022, 22, 231–243. https://doi.org/10.22937/IJCSNS.2022.22.9.33.
7.
Lokman, S.F.; Othman, A.T.; Abu-Bakar, M.H. Intrusion Detection System for Automotive Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus System: A Review. EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw. 2019, 2019, 184. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-019-1484-3.
8.
Patil, S.; Jain, S.; Kelkar, S. Enhancing Automotive Security: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning Model for Anomaly Detection in CAN Bus System. In Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE 6th India Council International Subsections Conference (INDISCON), Rourkela, India, 21–23 August 2025; pp. 1–6.
9.
Purohit, S.; Govindarasu, M. HAVEN: A Hybrid Anomaly Detection System for Intra-Vehicular CAN-Bus Communication Using Rule-Based and Neural Networks. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secur. Comput. 2026, 23, 7315–7328. https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2026.3673151.
10.
Kumara, S.; Cyril, H.P. Deep Learning-Based Intrusion Detection and Cybersecurity Framework for Connected Vehicle CAN Bus Communication Networks. In Proceedings of the 2026 14th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS), Beverly, MA, USA, 19–20 March 2026; pp. 1–6.
11.
Toth, B.M.; Banati, A. Hybrid AI-Driven Intrusion Detection System for CAN Bus Networks. In Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE 24th World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics (SAMI), Stara Lesna, Slovakia, 29–31 January 2026; pp. 000515–000520.
12.
Le, T.T.H.; Adiputra, A.A.; Dharmawangsa, A.A.N.; et al. Lightweight CNN-Based Intrusion Detection for CAN Bus Networks. IEEE Access 2026, 14, 14870–14891. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2026.3654521.
13.
Frenken, R.; Bhatti, S.G.; Zhang, H.; et al. KD-GAT: Combining Knowledge Distillation and Graph Attention Transformer for a Controller Area Network Intrusion Detection System. In Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE 28th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, 18–21 November 2025; pp. 3721–3726.
14.
Ahmed, N.; Babu, M.A.; Mollah, M.M.H.; et al. LRAE: A Low-Rank Autoencoder for Real-Time Efficient CAN Bus Intrusion Detection. In Proceedings of the 2025 12th International Conference on Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications (WINCOM), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 25–27 November 2025; pp. 1–6.
15.
Amer, K.; Bahaa-Eldin, A.; Sobh, M. Autoencoder-Powered Anomaly Detection: Securing CAN Bus Networks Against Cyber Attacks. In Proceedings of the 2025 12th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI), Semarang, Indonesia, 25–26 September 2025; pp. 764–769.
16.
Du, L.; Cheng, J.; Yun, L.; et al. StageDistill-CAN: Lightweight Multi-Stage Distillation for CAN Bus Intrusion Detection. In Proceedings of the 2025 6th International Conference on Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Mechanical Automation (IoTAIMA), Dalian, China, 22–24 August 2025; pp. 215–224.
17.
Azeez, B.A.; Dheyaa Radhi, A.; Mahmood, H.; et al. Zero-Day Threat Detection in Autonomous Vehicles Using Few-Shot LSTM Autoencoders on CAN Bus Data. In Proceedings of the 2025 3rd International Conference on Cyber Resilience (ICCR), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 3–4 July 2025; pp. 1–8.
18.
Yu, Z.; Liu, Y.; Li, R.; et al. LIDS: A Lightweight Intrusion Detection System for Controller Area Network. IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst. 2025, 44, 3303–3312. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2025.3543431.
19.
Turan, M.S.; McKay, K.; Kang, J.; et al. Ascon-Based Lightweight Cryptography Standards for Constrained Devices: Authenticated Encryption, Hash, and Extendable Output Functions; Technical Report NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-232; National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, MD, USA, 2025.
20.
Copeland, J.; Simpson, L.; Walker, G. Securing CAN Bus Transmissions with Lightweight AEAD Ciphers. In Proceedings of the 2026 Australasian Information Security Conference, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 11–12 February 2026; pp. 73–85.
21.
Robert Bosch GmbH. Company Overview. 2023. Available online: https://www.bosch.com/company/ (accessed on 8 February 2023).
22.
Robert Bosch GmbH. CAN Specification; Robert Bosch GmbH: Stuttgart, Germany, 1991.
23.
CAN in Automation (CiA). History of CAN Technology. 2023. Available online: https://www.can-cia.org/can-knowledge/history-of-can-technology (accessed on 27 March 2023).
24.
LIN Specification Package; Revision 2.2A; LIN Consortium: Ulm, Germany, 2010.
25.
CSS Electronics. LIN Bus Explained—A Simple Intro. 2022. Available online: https://www.csselectronics.com/pages/linbus-protocol-intro-basics (accessed on 13 April 2022).
26.
Robert Bosch GmbH. CAN with Flexible Data-Rate; Robert Bosch GmbH: Stuttgart, Germany, 2012.
27.
Robert Bosch GmbH. CAN XL, CAN XL, CAN, Bosch CAN, IP-Modules. 2022. Available online: https://www.boschsemiconductors.com/ip-modules/can-protocols/can-xl/ (accessed on 10 July 2025).
28.
Greg Cook. CRC RevEng: Arbitrary-Precision CRC Calculator and Algorithm Finder. 2024. Available online: https://reveng.sourceforge.io/ (accessed on 17 April 2025).
29.
Groll, A.; Ruland, C. Secure and Authentic Communication on Existing In-Vehicle Networks. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, Xi’an, China, 3–5 June 2009; pp. 1093–1097.
30.
Chavez, M.; Rosete, C.; Henriquez, F. Achieving Confidentiality Security Service for CAN. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP’05), Puebla, Mexico, 28 February–2 March 2005; pp. 166–170.
31.
Herrewege, A.; Singel´ee, D.; Verbauwhede, I. CANAuth—A Simple, Backward Compatible Broadcast Authentication Protocol for CAN Bus. In Proceedings of the ECRYPT Workshop on Lightweight Cryptography, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 28–29 November 2011.
32.
Ziermann, T.; Wildermann, S.; Teich, J. CAN+: A New Backward-Compatible Controller Area Network (CAN) Protocol with up to 16× Higher Data Rates. In Proceedings of the 2009 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition, Nice, France, 20–24 April 2009; pp. 1088–1093.
33.
Hartkopp, O.; Reuber, C.; Schilling, R. Full Paper MaCAN—Message Authenticated CAN. In Proceedings of the 10th ESCAR Europe, Berlin, Germany, 28–29 November 2012.
34.
Hazem, A.; Fahmy, H.M.A. LCAP—A Lightweight CAN Authentication Protocol for Securing in-Vehicle Networks. In Proceedings of the 10th ESCAR Embedded Security in Cars Conference, Berlin, Germany, 28–29 November 2012.
35.
Kurachi, R.; Matsubara, Y.; Takada, H.; et al. CaCAN—Centralized Authentication System in CAN. In Proceedings of the Embedded Security in Cars(ESCAR) Europe 2014, Braunschweig, Germany, 18–19 November 2014.
36.
Wang, Q.; Sawhney, S. VeCure: A Practical Security Framework to Protect the CAN Bus of Vehicles. In Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on the Internet of Things, IOT, Cambridge, MA, USA, 6–8 October 2014; pp. 13–18. https://doi.org/10.1109/IOT.2014.7030108.
37.
Wu, W.; Dai, J.; Huang, H.; et al. A Digital Watermark Method for In-Vehicle Network Security Enhancement. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 2023, 72, 8398–8408. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2023.3247180.
38.
Bruton, J. Securing CAN Bus Communication: An Analysis of Cryptographic Approaches. Ph.D. Thesis, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland, 2014.
39.
Bella, G.; Biondi, P.; Costantino, G.; et al. Toucan: A protocol to secure controller area network. In Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Automotive Cybersecurity (AutoSec’19), Richardson, TX, USA, 27 March 2019; Association for Computing Machinery: New York, NY, USA, 2019; pp. 3–8.
40.
Hridoy, S.A.A.; Zulkernine, M. LaaCan: A Lightweight Authentication Architecture for Vehicle Controller Area Network. In Security and Privacy in Communication Networks; Park, N., Sun, K., Foresti, S., et al., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2020; pp. 215–234.
41.
De Santis, F.; Schauer, A.; Sigl, G. ChaCha20-Poly1305 Authenticated Encryption for High-Speed Embedded IoT Applications. In Proceedings of the Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE), Lausanne, Switzerland, 27–31 March 2017; pp. 692–697.
42.
Radu, A.I.; Garcia, F.D. LeiA: A Lightweight Authentication Protocol for CAN. In Computer Security—ESORICS 2016; Askoxylakis, I., Ioannidis, S., Katsikas, S., et al., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2016; pp. 283–300.
43.
Nurnberger, S.; Rossow, C. vatiCAN—Vetted, Authenticated CAN Bus. In Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems—CHES 2016; Gierlichs, B., Poschmann, A.Y., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2016; pp. 106–124.
44.
Wei, Z.; Yang, Y.; Li, T. Authenticated CAN Communications Using Standardized Cryptographic Techniques. In Information Security Practice and Experience; Bao, F., Chen, L., Deng, R.H., et al., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2016; pp. 330–343.
45.
Van Bulck, J.; M¨uhlberg, J.T.; Piessens, F. VulCAN: Efficient Component Authentication and Software Isolation for Automotive Control Networks. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC ’17), Orlando, FL, USA, 4–8 December 2017; Association for Computing Machinery: New York, NY, USA, 2017; pp. 225–237.
46.
CANIS Automotive Labs. Encryption on CAN Bus: Overview of CryptoCAN; CANIS Automotive Labs: Cambridge, UK, 2022.
47.
Embedded Systems Academy. CANcrypt—Home. 2025. Available online: https://www.cancrypt.net/v1/index.html (accessed on 10 July 2025).
48.
Woo, S.; Jo, H.J.; Kim, I.S.; et al. A Practical Security Architecture for In-Vehicle CAN-FD. IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. 2016, 17, 2248–2261. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2016.2519464.
49.
Agrawal, M.; Huang, T.; Zhou, J.; et al. CAN-FD-Sec: Improving Security of CAN-FD Protocol. In Security and Safety Interplay of Intelligent Software Systems; Hamid, B., Gallina, B., Shabtai, A., et al., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2019; pp. 77–93.
50.
Montilla, A.A. Encrypted and Secure Messages with CAN FD; Technical Report; Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya: Barcelona, Spain, 2021.
51.
Groza, B.; Murvay, S.; Herrewege, A.V.; et al. LiBrA-CAN: Lightweight Broadcast Authentication for Controller Area Networks. ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst. 2017, 16, 90. https://doi.org/10.1145/3056506.
52.
Oberti, F.; Savino, A.; Sanchez, E.; et al. CAN-MM: Multiplexed Message Authentication Code for Controller Area Network Message Authentication in Road Vehicles. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 2024, 73, 14661–14673. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2024.3402986.
53.
Wiemer, F.; Zeh, A. Enabling Secure Communication for Automotive Endpoint-ECUs through Lightweight-Cryptography. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM Computer Science in Cars Symposium (CSCS ’23), Darmstadt, Germany, 5 December 2023; Association for Computing Machinery: New York, NY, USA, 2023.
54.
Rasheed, A.; Baza, M.; Badr, M.; et al. Efficient Crypto Engine for Authenticated Encryption, Data Traceability, and Replay Attack Detection over CAN Bus Network. IEEE Trans. Netw. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11, 1008–1025. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSE.2023.3312545.
55.
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Submission Requirements and Evaluation Criteria for the Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process; National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, MD, USA, 2018.
56.
Information Technology Laboratory—Computer Security Division—National Institute of Standards and Technology. Lightweight Cryptography. 2022. Available online: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/lightweight-cryptography (accessed on 8 February 2022).
57.
Dobraunig, C.; Eichlseder, M.; Mendel, F.; et al. Ascon v1.2. 2021. Available online: https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/lightweight-cryptography/documents/finalist-round/updated-spec-doc/ascon-spec-final.pdf (accessed on 18 April 2022).
58.
NIST Selects ‘Lightweight Cryptography’ Algorithms to Protect Small Devices; NIST: Gaithersburg, MD, USA, 2023.
59.
Siddiqui, A.S.; Lee, C.C.; Che, W.; et al. Secure Intra-Vehicular Communication over CANFD. In Proceedings of the 2017 Asian Hardware Oriented Security and Trust Symposium (AsianHOST), Beijing, China, 19–20 October 2017; pp. 97–102.
60.
Ferguson, N. Authentication Weaknesses in GCM. 20 May 2005. Available online: https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/Block-Cipher-Techniques/documents/BCM/Comments/CWC-GCM/Ferguson2.pdf (accessed on 16 June 2026).
61.
Computer Security Division, Information Technology Laboratory. NIST to Revise Special Publication 800-38D | Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC Block Cipher Modes 2024. Available online: https://csrc.nist.gov/News/2024/nist-torevise-sp-80038d-gcm-and-gmac-modes (accessed on 16 June 2026).
62.
Dworkin, M. Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC; Technical Report NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-38D; National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, MD, USA, 2007.
63.
Kim, H.; Seo, H. Optimizing AES-GCM on ARM Cortex-M4: A Fixslicing and FACE-Based Approach. Cryptology ePrint Archive 2025. Paper 2025/512. Available online: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/512 (accessed on 10 July 2025).
64.
Wu, H.; Huang, T. TinyJAMBU: A Family of Lightweight Authenticated Encryption Algorithms (Version 2). 17 May 2021. Available online: https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/lightweight-cryptography/documents/finalist-round/updatedspec-doc/tinyjambu-spec-final.pdf (accessed on 18 April 2022).
65.
Microchip Technology. MCP2515. 2023. Available online: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/MCP2515# (accessed on 17 February 2023).
66.
Lightweight-Cryptography-Benchmarking/Benchmarks at Main · Usnistgov/Lightweight-Cryptography-Benchmarking. 2025. Available online: https://github.com/usnistgov/Lightweight-Cryptography-Benchmarking/tree/main/benchmarks (accessed on 7 Feburary 2025).
67.
Weatherly, R. LWC Finalists. 2022. Available online: https://github.com/rweather/lwc-finalists (accessed on 16 February 2023).
68.
Mistry, S. CAN. 2023. Available online: https://docs.arduino.cc/libraries/can/ (accessed on 16 February 2023).
69.
ATMEGA4809. 2026. Available online: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/ATMEGA4809 (accessed on 19 June 2026).
70.
ATMEGA328P. 2023. Available online: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/atmega328p (accessed on 25 July 2023).
71.
Nano Every. 2023. Available online: https://docs.arduino.cc/hardware/nano-every (accessed on 16 February 2023).
72.
UNO R3. 2023. Available online: https://docs.arduino.cc/hardware/uno-rev3 (accessed on 16 February 2023).
73.
Mega 2560 Rev3. 2023. Available online: https://docs.arduino.cc/hardware/mega-2560 (accessed on 16 February 2023).
74.
ATmega2560. 2023. Available online: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/atmega2560 (accessed on 25 July 2023).
75.
Recommended for Automotive Designs. 2025. Available online: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/solutions/automotiveand-transportation/recommended-for-automotive (accessed on 9 February 2025).
76.
Turan, M.S. Status Report on the Final Round of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process; Technical Report NIST IR 8454; National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, MD, USA, 2023.
77.
RhysWeatherly. Performance on 32-Bit Platforms. 2025. Available online: https://rweather.github.io/lwc-finalists/performance.html (accessed on 7 February 2025).
78.
Weatherley, R. Additional Modes for LWC Finalists Technical Report, Version 1.0. 2021. Available online: https://github.com/rweather/lwc-finalists/blob/master/doc/lwc-modes-v1-0.pdf (accessed on 21 June 2026).
79.
Garnatz, O.; Decker, P. Change in Automotive Communication Systems. CAN Newsletter, December 2020.
80.
December 2020: CAN XL. 2025. Available online: https://www.can-cia.org/services/publications/can-newsletter-magazine/december-2020-can-xl (accessed on 10 July 2025).
81.
Poudyal, S.; Morozov, K. In-Vehicle Communication Security: Testing Real-Life Data. In Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Mobility, Operations, Services and Technologies (MOST), Dallas, TX, USA, 1–3 May 2024; pp. 235–241.

Scilight Press

Author Information

Abstract

Keywords

References

About Scilight

Journals

Publishing Policies

Contact Us