Automotive Electrical and Electronic Architecture Security via Distributed In-Vehicle Traffic Monitoring

Abstract

Due to the growing interconnectedness and complexity of in-vehicle networks, in addition to safety, security is becoming an increasingly important topic in the automotive domain. In this paper, we study techniques for detecting security infringements in automotive electrical and electronic (E/E) architectures. Toward this we propose in-vehicle network traffic monitoring to detect increased transmission rates of manipulated message streams. Attacks causing timing violations can disrupt safety-critical functions and have severe consequences. To reduce costs and prevent single points of failure, our approach enables an automatic distribution of detection tasks among selected E/E architecture components, such as a subset of electronic control units. First, we analyze a concrete E/E system architecture to determine the communication parameters and properties necessary for detecting security attacks. These are then used for a parametrization of the corresponding detection algorithms and the distribution of attack detection tasks. We use a lightweight message monitoring method and optimize the placement of detection tasks to ensure a full-coverage of the E/E system architecture and a timely detection of an attack.