Towards extended safety in connected vehicles

Abstract

Current standards for vehicle safety consider only accidental failures; they do not consider failures caused by malicious attackers. The standards implicitly assume that the sensors and Electronic Control Units (ECUs) of each vehicle compose a secure in-vehicle network because no external entity communicates with the nodes of the network. These standards assume that safety and security aspects are independent. Connecting vehicles to external entities, e.g., through Vehicle to Mobile (V2M), Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V), and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I), proved to be useful: it enables using Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications that improve our safety, efficiency, and comfort; but vulnerable to security threats. This paper provides an overview of AGORA framework: a framework generating secure and tested boilerplate code needed for ITS applications, demonstrates that safety and security aspects in motor vehicles are not independent, and proposes extending safety assurance by considering security aspects. It also discusses a set of research challenges related to extended safety assurance in connected vehicles. © 2013 IEEE.