Smart and Safe Driving: A Review of Threats and Security Measures for Autonomous Vehicles

As interest in personal, consumer-targeted intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) technologies such as self-driving cars continues to expand in regard to market size and public curiosity, safety and privacy challenges stemming from security issues are concerns, especially in a time where cybercrime is on the rise. This paper aims to identify threats to self-driving car safety and the countermeasures being developed, so that device manufacturers can address cyber security concerns and users are aware and informed of potential issues that may arise. To provide comprehensive coverage of existing literature on the subject, a systematic review was conducted, with defined keywords, search terms and criteria for inclusion. A qualitative content analysis was then performed, whereby codes and categories were deductively derived from the literature. The findings show that large volumes of highly complex attacks by malicious actors constantly take place against autonomous vehicle security systems. While many of these attacks are simply used to steal private data, tampering attacks on autonomous vehicles pose severe risks to user safety, including potential threats of vehicle collisions. While the countermeasures to the attacks on autonomous vehicles have proven highly successful, it is vital that manufacturers remain alert to changes in the threat landscape, to ensure that the highly dangerous threats towards these technologies are appropriately mitigated through reliable prevention, detection, and response measures.