U.S. Grants Patent for Bendix Systemto Protect Tractor-Trailers from Cyber Intrusions

For the larger trucking industry, technology advances like this one promises more secure operating systems and fewer operational disruptions and added costs

The U.S. Patent Office has granted a patent to Bendix Corporation for a new technology that will help detect and prevent cyber intrusions against tractor-trailers.

Names on the patent include Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC’s Product Owner in
Brake Redundancy, Thomas J. Hayes, and the National Motor Freight Traffic Association’s
(NMFTA) Senior Cybersecurity Research Engineer, Ben Gardiner.
The patent is for an active intrusion detector and protection system owned by Bendix for tractortrailer communication. For the larger trucking industry, technology advances like this one
promises more secure operating systems and fewer operational disruptions and added costs.
According to the abstract filed with the patent application, the device detects nefarious
communication signals in a vehicle using a combination of detection support logic, nefarious
logic, a filtering circuit, and a microcontroller.
Once incoming communication signals are determined nefarious, the abstract said, “The device
transmits a blocking signal to the nefarious logic to filter a frequency band of a communication
conductor of the wiring harness in response to the determination that the characteristic
measured during the first time differs from the characteristic measured during the second time.”

Various trucking companies who are members of NMFTA took part in the trailer cybersecurity
research project, which coincides with that time, bringing their equipment into the mix so the
developers could test it and apply what they learned to developing the technology.
“The NMFTA cybersecurity program has the mission to make things better, to improve
cybersecurity for our fleets,” Gardiner said. “We were able to show that these attacks are
possible, and we did this in various forms, including videos and so forth. There’s only so much
we can do on the bench, so we needed assistance from people who owned equipment.”
Gardiner said NMFTA participated in the patent, which Bendix will have the opportunity to
commercialize because the organization believes in the need for a healthy mix of public-domain
technologies, which are free to everyone, and those that offer the promise of greater return on
the research and development investment.
“We hope this strikes a balance between technologies that can be reused by everyone – such
as the attack mitigations, which the NMFTA published into the public domain — and those that
can be incentivized.”

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