Safeguarding Your Microcontrollers: Essential Security Measures

Enhancing Automotive Security: Start with the Microcontroller

Cars are Rapidly Evolving

Bryce Johnstone from Imagination Technologies highlights that the next-generation advancements in car design and electronics are likely to outpace the last fifty years of innovations within just five years. Modern cars are becoming more autonomous and interconnected through various wireless technologies. This rapid change brings a pressing need to enhance their security systems.

Electronic Evolution in Cars

When car electronics first appeared about sixty years ago, they were quite simple. Vehicles had only a few electronic control units (ECUs), and none of them communicated with each other or the external world. For instance, the ECU controlling the electric windows never interacted with the speedometer.

As cars began to connect to the outside world, numerous security concerns emerged. Enhanced electronic integration, including systems like keyless entry, audio setups, and wireless communications, created potential entry points for attackers into the deeply embedded control systems of the vehicle.

The Connected Car: A Double-Edged Sword

Today’s connected cars use over eleven different wireless interfaces, such as WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth, 3G, and LTE. These interfaces support wireless speakers, telematics systems, and connections to phones and headsets. Future innovations will add vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. However, being wireless means these signals can be intercepted and possibly exploited by hackers. This could lead to stolen user data or even remote takeovers of the vehicle, posing serious safety risks.

A notable example involves a Wired Magazine stunt where hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely drove a Jeep Cherokee off the road. They initially gained control through the OBD port and later extended their reach to remotely manipulate the air conditioning, radio, wipers, transmission, and steering by attacking the Jeep’s infotainment system. This scenario highlights the serious implications of unprotected vehicle systems.

The Dual Risk: Personal Info and Vehicle Control

Today’s user systems often store sensitive information like location data, credit card numbers, and insurance details. Meanwhile, embedded vehicle systems are crucial to the car’s physical operations. Compromising any of these systems can lead to theft or damage. A robust security strategy would be to use hardware virtualization to isolate applications in separate, secure environments – a concept known as security by separation.

Choosing the Right Microcontroller

To achieve high security, consider microcontrollers that support virtualization. This hardware virtualization technology, built into some microprocessors, divides a single MCU into multiple virtual sub-MCUs, each capable of running different operating systems and applications.

Using a hypervisor and a two-layer memory management unit, you can create independent containers that don’t affect each other. This ensures that if one process crashes – say if malware infects the infotainment system – other critical systems like ADAS, cluster, and navigation remain operational. Further security can be ensured by implementing features like secure boot.

Looking Ahead

Automotive security has evolved significantly since the days of basic alarms and keyless entry systems. Emerging technologies like blockchain and new security standards promise even better protection for future vehicles. The goal is to stay ahead of potential threats, ensuring both the safety and privacy of users remain uncompromised.