Series 9 – Episode 6 – The security challenges of autonomous vehicles

Paliwal leads the security IP group for semiconductors at Rambus. The company has a rich history of innovation into advanced semiconductor interconnect and security and is on a mission to secure semiconductors and its supply chain.

When it comes to autonomous cars, the autonomy in the vehicle is relying on sensor fusion to provide immense amounts of data that’s needed for spatial awareness. Paliwal said: “When you’re harnessing that data from multiple sensors, you have to build an awareness of the events happening around the vehicle and then allow it to process what’s happening in real time and take appropriate action.

“So, you can imagine this cannot happen on a Cloud somewhere … processing needs to happen on the car.”

As modern vehicles get closer to the target of level 5 autonomous driving, automotive security has become a growing issue for car manufacturers. “It all depends on how rich and how vulnerable the target environment is,” says Paliwal. In the case of a car, where private data is stored, when the car is functioning in real time, even a five-minute takeover by an adversary may result in a life or death situation. “So, that makes the security threat extremely high for anything that is moving,” Paliwal emphasises.

Not only can these autonomous vehicles be hacked and hijacked but they’re also at risk of being remotely killed while in the middle of the motorway.

Paliwal goes on to speak about what can be done to make sure the next generation of vehicles are secure and safe for consumers as well as what the difference is between ‘ASIL ready’ and ‘ASIL certified’.

To hear more about autonomous cars, security and much more, you can listen to Electronic Specifier’s interview with Neeraj Paliwal on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.