The Vehicle May Be Sick: Denial of Diagnostic Services by Exploiting the CAN Transport Protocol
Pith reviewed 2026-05-08 05:54 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
Manipulating the CAN transport protocol enables denial of vehicle diagnostic services and concealment of faults.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
We identify eight novel attack scenarios that exploit specific transport layer mechanisms in the ISO 15765-2 standard, including Flow Control manipulation, Sequence Number violations, and error handling abuses. We evaluate these attacks on a real passenger vehicle using two distinct diagnostic tools to demonstrate their practical impact. Our results confirm that three of these attack scenarios successfully induce denial of diagnostic services, leading to abnormal diagnostic results such as concealed faults and manipulated sensor readings.
What carries the argument
The transport layer mechanisms in ISO 15765-2 for segmenting and reassembling diagnostic messages over CAN, specifically Flow Control frames that manage data flow, Sequence Numbers that order consecutive frames, and procedures for handling protocol errors.
If this is right
- Three attack scenarios successfully induce denial of diagnostic services on a real vehicle.
- Abnormal diagnostic results include concealed faults that remain hidden from technicians.
- Sensor readings can be manipulated to show incorrect values during diagnostics.
- Technicians and drivers can be deceived about the true state of the vehicle.
- Undetected faults create potential safety risks for the vehicle and its occupants.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- Automotive systems could add basic validation or rate-limiting on diagnostic traffic to block these specific manipulations.
- Future revisions of ISO 15765-2 might incorporate integrity checks or session authentication to close the identified gaps.
- Similar transport-layer weaknesses could affect other CAN-based systems beyond passenger vehicles, such as commercial fleets or industrial equipment.
- Intrusion detection tuned to CAN frame sequences might detect these attacks in real time before they complete.
Load-bearing premise
The identified attack scenarios on Flow Control, Sequence Number, and error handling in ISO 15765-2 can be reliably executed against real vehicles using standard diagnostic tools without additional defenses or variations in implementation.
What would settle it
Running the eight attack scenarios against a vehicle whose diagnostic ECU or tool enforces strict validation of flow control frames and sequence numbers and checking whether any denial of diagnostic service still occurs.
Figures
read the original abstract
Vehicle diagnostics has become essential for detecting in-vehicle errors and ensuring safety. While the Unified Diagnostic Services (UDS) protocol is widely adopted for diagnostic operations, it relies on the ISO 15765-2 standard as the transport protocol over the Controller Area Network (CAN), which was designed without inherent security considerations. In this paper, we identify eight novel attack scenarios that exploit specific transport layer mechanisms in the ISO 15765-2 standard, including Flow Control manipulation, Sequence Number violations, and error handling abuses. We evaluate these attacks on a real passenger vehicle using two distinct diagnostic tools to demonstrate their practical impact. Our results confirm that three of these attack scenarios successfully induce denial of diagnostic services, leading to abnormal diagnostic results such as concealed faults and manipulated sensor readings. These findings highlight critical vulnerabilities that can deceive technicians and drivers, potentially exposing vehicles to significant safety risks.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper identifies eight novel attack scenarios exploiting transport-layer mechanisms in ISO 15765-2 (Flow Control manipulation, Sequence Number violations, and error-handling abuses) over CAN. It evaluates these on a real passenger vehicle using two standard diagnostic tools and reports that three scenarios succeed in inducing denial of diagnostic services, producing abnormal results such as concealed faults and manipulated sensor readings.
Significance. If the empirical results hold, the work provides concrete evidence that diagnostic services relying on ISO 15765-2 can be disrupted in practice, potentially misleading technicians and affecting vehicle safety. The use of real-vehicle testing with off-the-shelf tools is a positive aspect that grounds the attacks in realistic conditions rather than simulation alone.
major comments (2)
- Evaluation section: The experiments are performed on a single unspecified passenger vehicle and two diagnostic tools. Because ISO 15765-2 implementations vary in Flow Control timing, Sequence Number recovery, and error behavior across ECUs and manufacturers, the central claim that the three attacks reliably produce denial of diagnostic services requires testing on additional vehicles or ECUs to establish generalizability.
- Attack implementation details: The manuscript describes eight scenarios but provides limited specifics on exact packet sequences, timing parameters, or success/error rates for the three successful cases. Without these, it is difficult to assess reproducibility or confirm that the observed effects are due to the claimed transport-layer exploits rather than tool- or vehicle-specific quirks.
minor comments (2)
- The abstract and introduction should explicitly reference the relevant subsections of ISO 15765-2 (e.g., Flow Control frame formats and Sequence Number rules) to allow readers to map the attacks directly to the standard.
- Figure captions and tables summarizing attack outcomes would benefit from clearer labeling of which diagnostic tool produced which result and whether any baseline (no-attack) runs were performed for comparison.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for the detailed and constructive review. The comments highlight important aspects of generalizability and reproducibility that we will address in the revision. Below we respond point by point to the major comments.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: Evaluation section: The experiments are performed on a single unspecified passenger vehicle and two diagnostic tools. Because ISO 15765-2 implementations vary in Flow Control timing, Sequence Number recovery, and error behavior across ECUs and manufacturers, the central claim that the three attacks reliably produce denial of diagnostic services requires testing on additional vehicles or ECUs to establish generalizability.
Authors: We agree that evaluation on a single vehicle limits the strength of claims about reliability across the automotive ecosystem. Our choice of one real passenger vehicle and two off-the-shelf diagnostic tools was deliberate to ground the attacks in practical conditions rather than simulation. We cannot perform additional vehicle testing at this stage. In the revised manuscript we will (1) explicitly state this as a limitation in the Evaluation and Conclusion sections, (2) add a discussion of how Flow Control timing, sequence recovery, and error handling can differ across ECUs and manufacturers, and (3) qualify the central claim to reflect that the three attacks succeeded on the tested platform while noting that broader validation would be valuable future work. revision: partial
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Referee: Attack implementation details: The manuscript describes eight scenarios but provides limited specifics on exact packet sequences, timing parameters, or success/error rates for the three successful cases. Without these, it is difficult to assess reproducibility or confirm that the observed effects are due to the claimed transport-layer exploits rather than tool- or vehicle-specific quirks.
Authors: We accept that the current level of detail is insufficient for independent reproduction. In the revised version we will add an appendix containing the exact CAN frame sequences, inter-frame timing values, and observed success rates (including number of trials) for the three attacks that produced denial-of-service effects. We will also include a short description of how we verified that the diagnostic anomalies were caused by the transport-layer violations rather than tool or vehicle artifacts. revision: yes
Circularity Check
Empirical attack demonstration with no derivations or self-referential predictions
full rationale
The paper identifies eight attack scenarios on ISO 15765-2 mechanisms and evaluates three of them via direct testing on a real passenger vehicle using diagnostic tools. No equations, fitted parameters, predictions, or uniqueness theorems appear in the provided text. Results rest on empirical observation rather than any chain that reduces to its own inputs by construction. No self-citations are load-bearing for any derivation because none exist. This is a standard non-circular empirical security paper.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
Reference graph
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