Automotive security state of the art and future challenges

In the last 20 years, most vehicles have seen a large increase in complexity of the electronic and software systems, e.g. the number of electronic control units (ECUs) increased to over 70 in many cars and connectivity to the Internet or over Bluetooth is possible. In combination, the increased complexity and a large attack surface due to the connectivity makes it necessary to investigate the security of each ECU as well as the overall vehicle architecture. Most of the security countermeasures that are implemented to date or will be implemented in the future require some kind of hardware support. This paper identifies which security mechanisms are already implemented, and which should be introduced in the future. It further discusses which parts of each mechanism require special hardware support.