Anywhere, Any-Stymie: Remote Activation of Trojan Malware on LiDAR with Modulated Signals
LiDAR sensors are widely deployed in autonomous systems for safety-critical 3D perception. We identify a previously unexplored attack surface in which dormant malware, embedded in the LiDAR sensing pipeline, remains inactive during normal operation and is triggered externally after deployment, without access to sensor hardware or networking at attack time. This malware was developed in a closed research test environment with vendor technical support, rather than by exploiting an inherent production supply-chain vulnerability. To trigger the malware, we repurpose the sensor's own native dual-return signal processing as a covert channel for a modulated optical signal delivered into the environment. Once triggered, the malware performs false data injection and suppression on static and mobile platforms. Unlike optical spoofing, where the transmitted signal is itself the attack, here it carries only a small key that the sensor decodes with existing signal processing. We establish feasibility with static triggering at 300~ft and drive-by runs reaching 35 mph, and verify that injected artifacts are taken up as detections by a fine-tuned 3D object detector. On a deployed tactical autonomous vehicle running an unmodified production autonomy stack, we demonstrate both fail-safe and fail-dangerous impact: emergency stop, mission abort, and collision. These results motivate stronger integrity guarantees across LiDAR development and deployment pipelines.