SecUp: Secure and Efficient Wireless Software Updates for Vehicles

Abstract

Wireless software updates for vehicles are very beneficial for both customers and manufacturers, as they enable performance improvements and error correction without the need of vehicle recalls, as well as a reduction of warranty costs and continuous system upgrades over a vehicle's whole lifetime. However, adding a wireless interface to enable software updates over the air may also expose the vehicle to security threats and make it vulnerable to a variety of attacks. Hence, to protect the safety of the driver and passengers of a vehicle, a strong and comprehensive security concept is needed. In this paper, we propose SecUp: a novel security concept enabling efficient and trustworthy wireless software updates for vehicles. SecUp is based on a system-centric structured analysis enabling a secure system configuration. The concept uses, among others, symmetric and asymmetric keys securely stored on the devices in the network to prove the identity of the nodes and to ensure the integrity as well as the confidentiality of data. We evaluate the robustness of SecUp by employing an attacker-centric threat model and show that it is indeed applicable for efficient and trustworthy wireless software updates for vehicles.