Due to current development trends in the automotive industry towards stronger connected and autonomous driving, the attack surface of vehicles is growing which increases the risk of security attacks. This has been confirmed by several research projects in which vehicles were attacked in order to trigger various functions. In some cases these functions were critical to operational safety. To make automotive systems more secure, concepts must be developed that take existing attacks into account. Several taxonomies were proposed to analyze and classify security attacks. However, in this paper we show that the existing taxonomies were not designed for application in the automotive development process and therefore do not provide enough degree of detail for supporting development phases such as threat analysis or security testing. In order to be able to use the information that security attacks can provide for the development of security concepts and for testing automotive systems, we propose a comprehensive taxonomy with degrees of detail which addresses these tasks. In particular, our proposed taxonomy is designed in such a wa, that each step in the vehicle development process can leverage it.

Modern vehicles increasingly rely on electronics, software, and communication technologies (cyber space) to perform their driving task. Over-The-Air (OTA) connectivity further extends the cyber space by creating remote access entry points. Accordingly, the vehicle is exposed to security attacks that are able to impact road safety. A profound understanding of security attacks, vulnerabilities, and mitigations is necessary to protect vehicles against cyber threats. While automotive threat descriptions, such as in UN R155, are still abstract, this creates a risk that potential vulnerabilities are overlooked and the vehicle is not secured against them. So far, there is no common understanding of the relationship of automotive attacks, the concrete vulnerabilities they exploit, and security mechanisms that would protect the system against these attacks. In this article, we aim at closing this gap by creating a mapping between UN R155, Microsoft STRIDE classification, Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC), and Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE). In this way, already existing detailed knowledge of attacks, vulnerabilities, and mitigations is combined and linked to the automotive domain. In practice, this refines the list of UN R155 threats and therefore supports vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, and approval authorities to meet and assess the requirements for vehicle development in terms of cybersecurity. Overall, 204 mappings between UN threats, STRIDE, CAPEC attack patterns, and CWE weaknesses were created. We validated these mappings by applying our Automotive Attack Database (AAD) that consists of 361 real-world attacks on vehicles. Furthermore, 25 additional attack patterns were defined based on automotive-related attacks.

Modern connected or autonomous vehicles (AVs) are highly complex cyber-physical systems. As a result of the high number of different technologies and connectivity features involved, testing these systems to identify security vulnerabilities is a big challenge. Security testing techniques, such as penetration testing, are often manual methods that are applied comparatively late in the vehicle development process. Thus, vulnerabilities are only detected late or after development, leading to higher costs and more patching effort. To reduce the amount of testing resources in general and enable early and automated testing, model-based testing methods have been established in several domains, such as information technology and the automotive domain. The transfer of model-based testing approaches to automotive security testing could help to detect vulnerabilities earlier than other, manual methods by automatically generating, executing, or simulating security tests. In this study, we review the literature on model-based test approaches in the automotive domain. First, we consider security-independent approaches to obtain an overview of applied models, formalisms, test selection criteria, and test generation techniques. In addition, we investigate, whether and how model-based approaches are applied for automotive security testing. Overall, we identified 63 publications related to model-based testing and 29 publications with regard to model-based security testing. The aim of this study is to provide an overview and direct comparison between these approaches. In this manner, the state of model-based security testing in the automotive domain, current challenges, and potential research areas are determined.

Since several years, the overall awareness for the necessity to consider a vehicle as a potentially vulnerable system is facing accelerated growth. In 2015, the safety relevant exploitability of vulnerabilities through cyber attacks was exposed to a broader public for the first time. Only a few months after this attack has reached public awareness, affected manufacturer implemented one of the first bug bounty programs within the automotive field. Since then, many others followed by adapting some of ITs good practices for handling and responsibly disclose found and reported vulnerabilities for the automotive field. Nevertheless, this work points out that much remains to be done concerning quantity and quality of these measures. In order to cope with this, this present paper deals with what can be learned from IT and which conclusions can be drawn from these findings in the light of special conditions in the automotive environment. Furthermore, current handling and challenges regarding the disclosure process of vulnerabilities in the automotive sector are presented. These challenges are addressed by discussing desirable conditions for a beneficial disclosure culture as well as requirements and responsibilities of all parties involved in the disclosure process.

The usage of batteries and supercapacitors in the field of electric vehicles is becoming increasingly prominent in both research and development. Due to the complementary advantages of the two systems, high energy density, and high power density, a combined battery/supercapacitor system offers potential. To effectively utilise the potential of such a hybrid energy storage system (HESS), one requires an intelligent energy management system (EMS). The EMS is responsible for controlling the electrical power between the battery and the supercapacitor in such a way that the required power can be optimally distributed at all times (currently and in the future). For this purpose, the energy management system utilises information on the driving route and, based on this information, shall calculate a global strategy for the continuous power distribution. The controlled power distribution should take place in real time and be robust against discrepancies so that unpredictable or unreliably predictable events do not significantly influence the functionality. For the implementation of the concept, a rule-based power distribution is implemented in combination with a predictive energy management. Here, the energy management is combined with a rule-based strategy calculation based on data on the route to be driven with a global optimization for the calculation of a route-specific strategy. Depending on the selected objective, the increase in energy efficiency, or lifetime, the operation of the power control is optimised. Due to the functional separation, the continuous power control can operate in real time, while more computational time can be spent on the calculations of the power management strategy, which accordingly does not need to be executed in real time. The results show that by using the presented EMS, especially in combination with a route-specific parameterisation, a significant effect on the energy efficiency and/or battery lifetime can be achieved. The average battery energy consumption can be reduced by up to 9.14% on urban routes. Regarding battery lifetime, the average battery usage can be reduced up to 13.35% and the battery energy losses even up to 62.72%.

Engineering autonomous driving functions has become a dramatic challenge in automotive engineering since it is now required to integrate knowledge from multi-disciplinary domains. In this context, the widespread engineering methods are showing their limit since they mainly integrate technological centered point of view. Thus, these new requirements lead naturally to the design of new method for engineering in automotive field. The goal of this paper is to sketch an overview of the possible improvements that Knowledge Modeling and ontologies can bring to Systems Engineering and especially in the case of Autonomous Driving functions.