Presentation Material

Abstract

For the last 10 years, the automotive industry has been involved in an electrification and automation process that is revolutionizing the way we drive. The fundamentals of this deep transformation are the battery-powered engines, the self-driving cars and the connected vehicles. These technological advances – specially the connectivity of the vehicles – brings many new cybersecurity challenges that need to be addressed in the coming years.

The goal of the work we present here is to assess the current state of the connected vehicles security. Compared with other works already published where the researchers chose to attack a popular modern car, we focused in other automotive components and systems that security experts – and car designers – usually overlook and that could be abused to launch scalable and massive attacks. The analyzed devices like T-boxes, OBD2 dongles, 5G modems, MQTT servers and mobile apps. We aimed to get a broader picture of the automotive security and not a limited view based exclusively on the car security.

Our research resulted in multiple vulnerability issues that can be exploited remotely to get full control of an entire fleet of vehicles, including cars, heavy-duty trucks and cranes. Although our work is limited to few devices – not enough to make an industry-wide conclusion – it indicates that these kind of security issues might be common and the security of connected automotive systems needs to be improved.

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The discussion revolves around the security of automotive systems, for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and aftermarket vendors. The speakers highlight the importance of securing these systems from potential vulnerabilities, a third-party OEM may introduce.

Key points:

1. Aftermarket vendors have limited opportunities to secure their products when integrated with an OEM’s architecture.
2. Independent penetration testing or internal security reviews can help identify vulnerabilities before integration.
3. Incident response teams or security point-of-contacts are essential for addressing potential issues.
4. Legality concerns arise when performing reverse engineering and source code analysis, the speakers emphasize the importance of being least intrusive and involving legal entities in every country.
5. In cases where vendors refuse to patch vulnerabilities, adding security measures as an afterthought can be challenging, and it is better to have security built-in from the start.

Additionally, the discussion touches on:

1. Upcoming legislations, such as UN R1155, that aim to mandate security in devices.
2. The lack of fines for specific cases like this in the European Union.
3. Findings of vulnerabilities in the European Union, which are yet to be disclosed due to a lack of response from vendors.

Overall, the conversation emphasizes the need for OEMs and aftermarket vendors to prioritize security in their products and collaborate on addressing potential vulnerabilities to ensure the safety and integrity of automotive systems.