Understanding the Changing Landscape of Automotive Software Vulnerabilities: Insights from a Seven-Year Analysis

The automotive industry has experienced a drastic transformation in the past few years when vehicles got connected to the internet. Nowadays, connected vehicles require complex architecture and interdependent functionalities, facilitating modern lifestyles and their needs. As a result, automotive software has shifted from "just embedded system/SoC (System on Chip)" to a more hybrid platform, which includes software for web/mobile applications, cloud, simulation, infotainment, etc. Automatically, the security concerns for automotive software have also developed accordingly. This paper presents a study on automotive vulnerabilities from 2018 to September 2024, i.e., the last seven years, intending to understand and report the noticeable changes in their pattern/trend. 1,663 automotive software vulnerabilities were found to have been reported in the studied time frame. The study reveals the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) associated with these vulnerabilities develop over time and how different parts of the automotive ecosystem are exposed to these CWEs. Our study provides the platform to understand the automotive software weaknesses and loopholes and paves the way for identifying the phases in the software development lifecycle where the vulnerability was introduced. Our findings are a step forward to support vulnerability management in automotive software across its entire life cycle.