Simulating Cryptographic Primitives in Model Based Systems Engineering Projects

Security has become an increasingly critical concern for large off-road vehicle manufacturers due to the growing threats posed by hackers, heightened awareness around data privacy, the implementation of anti-tamper technologies, and stringent emissions regulations. These pressures necessitate the development of robust security measures that can effectively safeguard vehicle systems while promoting responsible and sustainable innovation. To address these challenges, cybersecurity teams and engineers can leverage tools such as Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), which facilitates the rapid and cost-effective development of comprehensive security mechanisms. This paper explores the application of systems engineering techniques to create a solution for ensuring integrity and authenticity in Controller Area Network (CAN) systems, which are commonly utilized in heavy-duty diesel engines. The deployment of solutions to secure the CAN bus will likely depend on cryptography. However, modeling systems utilizing cryptographic primitives are limited, so a novel approach of utilizing external function calls from a modeling tool is demonstrated on a use case for provisioning a new electronic control unit (ECU) acting as an intelligent sensor. Utilizing the actual cryptographic computations in simulation enhances model fidelity and provides concrete instances for examples that developers can use to realize systems. Keywords. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Cybersecurity, Cryptography, Simulation