Solanki, Abhijeet, Al Amiri, Wesam, Mahmoud, Marim, Swieder, Blaine, Hasan, Syed Rafay, & Guo, Terry N. (2025). Survey of navigational perception sensors’ security in autonomous vehicles. *IEEE Access, 13*, 104937-104965. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3578891
The use of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has grown rapidly in recent years. These vehicles offer many benefits, such as improving road safety, reducing transportation costs, and making travel easier for more people. However, as AVs become more advanced and more connected to the internet, they also become more vulnerable to cyberattacks. This makes protecting their security increasingly important.
One of the biggest concerns is the risk of attacks on the sensors that AVs use to understand their surroundings and make driving decisions. These sensors include LiDAR, cameras, radar, GPS, and ultrasonic sensors. If hackers interfere with these devices, they could mislead the vehicle and cause serious accidents.
Although past research has examined some cybersecurity issues in AVs, there are still gaps in what we know—especially when it comes to how hackers might target multiple sensors at once (a technique known as sensor fusion attacks) and how AV hardware can be protected. This paper takes a closer look at these lesser-studied threats.
Specifically, the authors provide a new and detailed overview of how attackers might exploit weaknesses in AV sensors. They also introduce a new way to classify these vulnerabilities and describe real-world defense strategies that can be tested through simulations and special testing environments. This research helps fill important gaps and offers practical ideas for making AVs more secure.
FIGURE 1.
The considered security concerns on AV navigation perception sensors.
