The idea of the ‘connected car’ has existed for many years but now they’ve developed to the point at which vehicles can have dozens of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) controlling systems that drivers might never interact with. Each component has some kind of connection outside of the vehicle that needs to be secured against intrusion, leading to increased complexity between overlapping security systems, says Alois Kliner, pictured, VP Automotive & IoT Manufacturing, at the cyber and compliance product firm Utimaco.
Now, this array of disconnected systems, often made by different manufacturers, is replacing the numerous ECUs with a small number of HPC High Performance Computers that function more like a modern day smartphone. So called ‘software-defined vehicles’ (SDVs) are a single system onto which software ‘apps’ can be installed in a similar way to said smartphone. This has opened up the ability for automobile manufacturers to offer subscription-based features like BMW’s Front Seat Heating or Tesla’s Supercharger.
However, with cybersecurity threats to vehicles on the rise, a hack on a vehicle could have extremely grave consequences, such as disabling its brakes or take over the steering. Automotive security is being taken extremely seriously by automotive manufacturers for both the above reason, as well the threat that one serious breach could destroy their company’s reputation.
SDVs and security
The move to software-defined vehicles has profound implications for how drivers interact with their vehicles and for the security of those vehicles. Early motor vehicles were entirely mechanical but as they developed over the course of the 20th century even though they incorporated more electrical components they were chiefly defined by their hardware – bigger engines, lighter alloys, two seats instead of four. An SDV has features that are defi ..
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