Autonomous driving requires new automotive technologies that rely on increased computing power and increased data exchange within the vehicle and to the outside world. New technologies such as Automotive Ethernet are replacing or extending legacy technologies within a vehicle such as LIN, CAN, MOST, or FlexRay. Also new E/E architectures are used in autonomous vehicles including domain fusion, centralization, ECU consolidation / integration of multiple functionalities in one ECU (including mixed criticality), and increased backend connection. Also, in the automotive world new approaches such as service-orientation are introduced with the AUTOSAR adaptive platform. From a security perspective, this technology change is ambivalent since it enables new attacks but also enables the use of (new) sophisticated security solutions or the use of established Internet security protocols within a vehicle.

However, there are still many issues to solve. Internet protocols such as (D)TLS or IPsec using TCP/IP or UDP/IP have not been specifically designed to address automotive requirements, e.g., support for multicast communication, or latency and bandwidth guarantees. A thorough evaluation of such protocols and adaptions / improvements is required. In addition, entirely new protocols need to be developed for certain scenarios. Furthermore, designs for communication architectures, e.g., the use of firewalls, domain separation, filtering mechanisms, or VLANs, requires additional research. In addition to already intensively investigated ITS Vehicle2X communication, new communication protocols are rising. For example, autonomous electric vehicles will communicate wirelessly with charge points using ISO 15118 Edition 2. The vehicle communicates the estimated time of arrival, battery status, required energy, and desired point in time to continue the travel to the charging point, which enables optimal charging schedules as well as the optimization of the load management to use the energy grid effectively. In addition, protocols for secure over-the-air (OTA) code updates are required (which is also required by the UNECE WP.29 regulation).

The goal of SEACOP is
to improve the communication security within the E/E system of autonomous vehicles and for selected external communication. To achieve this goal, we evaluate existing protocols, develop new protocols, and implement and evaluate our new solutions. Concrete, we address the following objectives:

• Evaluation of (security) protocols used in the automotive domain and other domains which may be suitable for use in E/E architectures of autonomous vehicles.
• Development of improved and adapted protocols as well as new protocols for the use within vehicles.
• Evaluation of protocols used for external communication with focus on remote management and communication of electric vehicles with the charging infrastructure.
• Development of improved and adapted protocols as well as new protocols for the external communication.
• Prototypical implementation and evaluation.

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