Automotive cybersecurity incidents doubled in 2019, up 605% since 2016
Upstream Security’s 2020 Automotive Cybersecurity Report shares in-depth insights and statistics gleaned from analyzing 367 publicly reported automotive cyber incidents spanning the past decade, highlighting vulnerabilities and insights identified during 2019.
Automotive-related cybersecurity incidents surge
“With the rapid rise of attacks on the automotive industry, OEMs and smart mobility providers need extensive visibility and clarity into the threat landscape, helping them design the proper security architecture spanning their vehicles and cloud environments,” said Oded Yarkoni, Upstream Security’s VP of Marketing. “Our annual automotive cybersecurity report shows that the threats faced by the entire industry are real and increasingly more prevalent.”
Upstream’s 2020 Automotive Cybersecurity Report introduces some of the key findings of the AutoThreat Intelligence research team for 2019 as well as solutions used by the industry going forward:
Connected vehicles are already taking over: 330 million vehicles are already connected, and top car brands in the US market have stated that only connected vehicles will be sold by 2020. This fact alone exponentially increases the potential damage of each attack. A wide-scale attack could potentially disrupt an entire city and even lead to catastrophic loss of lives.
The number of automotive cybersecurity incidents has increased dramatically: Since 2016, the number of annual incidents has increased by 605%, with incidents more than doubling in the last year alone.
Most incidents are carried out by criminals: 57% of incidents in 2019 were carried out by cybercriminals to disrupt businesses, steal property, and demanding ransom. Only 38% were the result of researchers with the goal of warning companies and consumers of discovered vulnerabilities.
A third of all incidents involved keyless entry attacks: The top three attack vectors over the past ten years were keyless entry systems (30%), backend servers (27%), and mobile apps (13%).
Everyone is affected, from automotive companies to consumers: over the past ten years, every type of company in the smart mobility system was affected. This includes OEMs, fleets, telematics, and after-market service providers, and ride-sharing services along with consumers who have had their property and private information were stolen.
A third of incidents resulted in car theft and break-ins: The top three impacts of incidents over the past ten years were car thefts/break-ins (31%), control over car systems (27%), and data/privacy breaches (23%).
The vast majority of incidents in 2019 involved remote attacks: 82% of incidents in 2019 involved short and long-range remote attacks, which do not require physical access to the vehicle and can be carried out from anywhere in the world.
Awareness is increasing: More automotive vulnerabilities are being listed, with 66 CVEs listed to date. The use of bug bounty programs, which has been popular in enterprise infosec, is on the rise as more automotive companies adopt it as a way to discover vulnerabilities. These programs offer compensation to researchers (white hat hackers) who discover and report vulnerabilities to the owner company. Additionally, government officials and consumers are demanding regulations and laws to protect them against cybercrime in the automotive space.
The industry is adopting a multilayered security approach: This involves new regulations and standards, security by design, in-vehicle and cloud-based automotive cybersecurity solutions, and expanding SOCs to VSOCs (Vehicle Security Operations Centers) for early detection and rapid remediation.