Vehicular Computer Networks: Information Security, Connectivity and Algorithm Development

Dear Colleagues,

The complexity of vehicles has grown significantly as a result of different expectations for modern cars. Trends like connectivity, autonomous driving, shared mobility services and the electrification of the powertrain have and will play a crucial role for the vehicle’s electronic architecture, and these trends are sometimes referred to as CASE-strategy within the automotive world. Based on this, upcoming technical trends can be (fore)seen. To name a few, high-performance computers are introduced to cope with rising processing demands for automated driving functions, and AI based-algorithms are in particular intended to interpret the vehicle’s environment in a safe and secure way. In addition, various interfaces and protocols onboard and offboard to the outside world must be realized in a secure and resilient way. As an example, within the vehicle network, service-oriented architectures with a dynamic partition of services are on the horizon. Further, the interconnection of cars to clouds via X-Over-The-Air-services (XOTA), e.g., firmware updates (FOTA), or infotainment services and the connection to local applications (remote keys and keyless entry systems, tire pressuring, Bluetooth, etc.) surely makes the car vulnerable and attractive for security attacks. Thus, the secure design of vehicles can be seen as a strong cross-sectional trend across the abovementioned CASE strategy. To summarize, soon we will experience a strong evolution, if not even a revolution, in vehicular information technology.

Further on, the technical implementations must be designed in a way that they are working resiliently during a vehicle’s lifecycle of around 15 to 20 years. Remote firmware update services and remote diagnostics services are common in today’s cars and may help to reduce the SW aging. However, the chosen hardware also has to be able to cope with upcoming challenges and a possible replacement of only a few of the dozens of existing Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that may lead to a total economic damage of a vehicle due to the replacement costs. To explicitly name an open question regarding the lifecycle, we can, e.g., look at the development of post quantum computers and their cryptography even if their broad usage is unlikely within the next decade. As actual asymmetric cryptographical algorithms are attackable by post-quantum approaches and are used within various vehicle’s ECUs, “post-quantum ready” E/E architectures and underlying HW platforms are already thoughts of today’s automotive industry.

This Special Issue of Vehicular Computer Networks: Information Security; Connectivity and Algorithms will cover actual and upcoming technical approaches for (connected) vehicles with, but not exclusively, a special focus i) on the vehicle’s security, ii) on the offboard and onboard connectivity and iii) on algorithmic aspects for, e.g., automated resp. autonomous functions.

Prof. Dr. Reiner Kriesten
Prof. Dr. Franck Gechter
Prof. Dr. Frank Kargl
Guest Editors

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• automotive security
• resilient car networks
• Car-2-X and mobility services
• artificial intelligence in vehicle networks
• algorithms, automated driving and functional development