Likelihood of Threats to Connected Vehicles

Connected vehicles communicate with neighboring vehicles, road side units, personal devices, and service centers; and have their electronic control units communicate through their in-vehicle networks. This provides cyberattackers with the opportunity to communicate with the vehicles and to stage attacks. This paper reports about a case study for estimating the likelihoods of threats for connected vehicles; it provides the results of a survey that we conducted to estimate the likelihoods of 7 threats to connected vehicles. The experts rated 6 threats as “very unlikely” and one as “almost impossible.” The survey shows that attacks on connected vehicles needs to be fast (before being discovered or the attack context changes) and be staged by experts who have deep knowledge about the targets. It also shows that developing such attacks does not require long time, neither expensive equipment and tools. Thus, cyber-attacks on connected vehicles are not lab experiments anymore; they are real threats for the society.