Signal-Layer Security and Trust-Boundary Identification based on Hardware-Software Interface Definition
Georg Macher, Harald Sporer, Eugen Brenner, Christian Kreiner · Journal of Ubiquitous Systems and Pervasive Networks · 2018
An important trend in the automotive domain is to adapt established functional safety processes and methods for security engineering.Although functional safety and cyber-security engineering have a considerable overlap, the trend of adapting methods from one domain to the other is often challenged by non-domain experts.Just as safety became a critical part of the development in the late 20th century, modern vehicles are now required to become resilient against cyber-attacks.As vehicle providers gear up for this challenge, they can capitalize on experiences from many other domains, but must also face several unique challenges.Such as, that cyber-security engineering will now join reliability and safety as a cornerstone for success in the automotive industry and approaches need to be integrated into the mainly safety oriented development lifecycle of the domain.The recently released SAE J3061 guidebook for cyber-physical vehicle systems focus on designing cyber-security aware systems in close relation to the automotive safety standard ISO 26262.The key contribution of this paper is to analyse a method to identify attack vectors on complex automotive systems via signal interfaces and propose a security classification scheme and protection mechanisms on signal layer.To that aim, the hardware-software interface (HSI), a central development artefact of the ISO 26262 functional safety development process, is used and extended to support the cyber-security engineering process and provide cyber-security countermeasures on signal layer.