Foundations of Cyber Defense Dynamics in Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: Process and Architectural Design Principles

The transition to connectivity and advanced technologies within the automotive sector has increased the attack surface of connected/autonomous vehicles (CAVs), creating an immediate problem that needs robust and systematic solutions. Although the Design and Verification Processes in the context of Automotive Cybersecurity have improved, current responses to attacks have been mostly reactive in nature. Also, some of the countermeasures applied assume that the main objective of an attacker is financial gain and that they will target only Personal Identifiable Information (PII). However, even if that is the case for most attacks, some of the techniques used (like DoS attacks) can also intervene with ADAS or Autonomous features, creating a Safety problem too, especially when these attacks are applied to cars and cloud infrastructures interacting on the road. This work argues that, in order to advance Automotive Cybersecurity and include a more complete Cyber-Safety approach to Design and Verification, state-of-the-art Mathematical concepts need to be explored and integrated into OEMs Requirements and Processes. In particular, this work shows that Control Theoretic approaches are better suited for Dynamic Cyber Defense of the Vehicle when Autonomous Driving features are engaged.