Secure Vehicle Software Updates: Requirements for a Reference Architecture

Paper in proceeding, 2023

A modern vehicle is no longer merely a transportation vessel. It has become a complex cyber-physical system containing over 100M lines of software code controlling various functionalities such as safety-critical steering, brake, and engine control. The amount of code is anticipated to rise to around 300M lines of code by 2030. Furthermore, even well-tested code will contain more than one bug per 1000 lines of code. Thus, it can be expected that there will be around 100k bugs in a modern vehicle and around 300k bugs in a few years, where some might have a safety-critical impact. Automotive companies are transforming into software companies with more software developed in-house. The ability to hastily and securely patch vulnerabilities has become vital and is a prerequisite when securing modern cars. The UN Regulation No. 156 and the ISO 24089 emphasize the ability to update vehicle software securely. Consequently, we focus on securing the vehicle software update process. Our contributions include defining an attacker model and general security requirements. We further map these requirements to common security goals and directives to ensure broad coverage. Additionally, we present UniSUF, a secure and versatile approach to vehicle software updates. We identify entities involved during vehicle software updates, perform a threat assessment, and map the identified threats to security goals and requirements. The results highlight a secure framework with high industrial relevance that can be used as a reference architecture to guide securing similar software update systems within automotive and related areas such as cyber-physical systems, internet-of-things, and smart cities.