A context-aware zero trust-based hybrid approach to IoT-based self-driving vehicles security

With the speedy progression and adoption of IoT devices in modern self-driving vehicles (SDVs), autonomous driving industry is gradually reforming its capabilities to provide better transportation services. However, this domain faces enormous security and privacy challenges and thus has become an attractive target for attackers due to its rapid growth and market worth. Furthermore, the rapid transformation in technological tools in transport industry and speedy evolution of cyber-attacks paved the way for designing efficient IDSs. Motivated by these challenges, we put forward a new secure and efficient IDS approach for the security of SDVs. The propose approach utilizes an emerging strategy to mitigate security vulnerabilities and cyber attacks detection using zero trust (ZT) model. Through this work, we put forward a context-aware zero trust security framework for IoT-based SDVs. The proposed framework utilizes a context-aware design to evaluate the trustworthiness of the devices using multi-source trust and reputation model. Then, to make the framework more effective and reliable, we introduce crawler system into the context of the IoT-devices in SDVs to make the system unbiased. Additionally, an observer module is developed that employs state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm to detect malicious actions. Empirical results on two standard benchmark datasets (i.e., Car Hacking and ToN_IoT) validate the practicality and robustness of propose framework in real-world transport systems with enhanced security and trust management against evolving cyber-threats. Detection results demonstrate that the proposed framework secured the best performance by achieving 99.43% and 99.52% accuracy for Car Hacking and ToN_IoT, respectively. The findings of this study will help the security professionals and researchers to comprehend the importance of ZT architecture in developing effective and robust security solutions for modern IoT-based SDVs.