# The Impact of Spoofing Attacks in Connected Autonomous Vehicles under Traffic Congestion Conditions
## 3 System Model
### Spoofing Attack  
To assess the impact of a prominent DoS attack, such as a spoofing attack, under real-world urban traffic conditions, and to formulate suitable mitigation strategies, we instantiate several pertinent scenarios. A representative spoofing attack category for vehicle platooning involves attacks generated by non-platoon members. According to recent literature [17], solutions regarding safe management protocols for adding new vehicle members in a platoon are proposed. Therefore, any external communication with platoon members is somehow filtered, while their internal communication is considered secure. However, as we mentioned in the previous section, in this paper's scenarios, vehicle platoons are created in an ad-hoc fashion, in real-time conditions, based on their movement characteristics (i.e., if they move on the same road at the same speed, etc.). Additionally, we assume that an internal node within the platoon may either be compromised due to hacking or may act in self-interest by disseminating misleading data to fellow platoon members, who in turn perceive this information as accurate. In the simulation scenario, all vehicles have a network card installed using the IEEE 802.11p standard [18], which supports the Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE). It leverages the use of 5.9 GHz frequency to facilitate V2V communication among all the mobile vehicles within the available communication range, as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication between vehicles and RSUs. Specifically, the spoofing attack scenario assumes that the vehicle platoon moves around the city of Erlangen, on specified routes, according to Figure 1. Starting from the 10 th second of the simulation, the platoon leader (Node 0: spoofer) begins to manipulate the parameters of a WSM, notably its speed, by assigning a random value drawn from a uniform distribution, within the range of (0.1, 0.9). Despite these alterations, this vehicle continues along its designed route without any deviation. Subsequently, Node 1 (the victim), as soon as it receives this message, sets its speed at a value drawn from uniform distribution with values in the set (0.1, 0.9). This creates a traffic jam, with the platoon members following to form a _queue_ of stopped cars at the minimum desired distance of 2.5 m, as can be seen in Figure 2.  
This happens because, during the attack, the vehicles are moving on a dual carriageway with one lane of traffic in each direction. Therefore, the vehicles that follow cannot overtake Node 1 (victim). Around the 85 th simulation second, the vehicles platoon reaches an intersection. This means that the duration of the spoofing attack is about 75 s. We also \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Evaluation Parameters in Veins Simulator** & **Normal Scenario** & **Spoofing Attack Scenario** \\ \hline Number of Lanes & one per direction & one per direction \\ \hline Row & 1 & 1 \\ \hline RSU & 1 & 1 \\ \hline Total Simulation Time & 120 s & 120 s \\ \hline Duration of Attack & 0 s & 110 s \\ \hline Range of Vehicles (vehicles/km ) & \(10,15,20,25\) & \(10,15,20,25\) \\ \hline Desired Speed & 50 m/s & 50 m/s \\ \hline Maximum Acceleration & 6.0 m/s\({}^{2}\) & 6.0 m/s\({}^{2}\) \\ \hline Maximum Deceleration & 7.5 m/s\({}^{2}\) & 7.5 m/s\({}^{2}\) \\ \hline Reaction Time & 1.0 to 1.5 s & 1.0 to 1.5 s \\ \hline Vehicle Length & 2 & 2 \\ \hline Minimum Gap & 2.5 m & 2.5 m \\ \hline Victim & 0 & 1 (Node 1) \\ \hline Spoofing Attackers & 0 & 1 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Simulation parameters. assume that any member of the platoon is running a highly protected piece of code, whereby if it remains stopped for a reasonable 10 s threshold, it will alert the following vehicles to change routes to reach their destination. Then, the vehicles to follow (from the victim node down) are detached from the platoon (if they have the choice) in order to \"overcome\" the obstacle of Node 1 (victim) and continue their route unhindered.