Securing Vehicle’s Electronic Control Units

Electronic Control Units (ECUs) are essential for controlling many functions and systems in current and future vehicles. Modern vehicles incorporate over seventy ECUs. Those ECUs are vulnerable to security attacks. A number of these attacks can be fatal and can result in casualties. Undoubtedly, there is a critical need for protecting the ECUs infrastructure. This paper proposes an approach to secure vehicle’s ECUs based on a grouping principle. Four groups are introduced. Each group is controlled by a Master ECU, and the Master ECUs are controlled by a Super Master ECU. Public key cryptology is adopted. Furthermore, the possibility of applying symmetric key cryptology, Elliptic Curve Cryptology (ECC), and One-Time Pad are investigated. Keywords— ECUs; Security Architecture; Security Protocols; Security Requirements