Challenges Within V2X : A cybersecurity risk assessment for V2X use cases

Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) is referred to as the technology enabling communication and data exchange between vehicles and is considered a significant milestone within automotive. By enabling inter-vehicle communication, the vehicles will be more aware of their surroundings—including things outside their current line-of-sight (LOS). The vehicles utilizing this technology are in Europe referred to as Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS). A single vehicle is referred to as an ITS station (ITS-S). These are the terms presented in the European V2X standard called the ETSI ITS. This thesis considered the ETSI ITS standard since it is one of the most mature within the V2X standardization flora. This thesis investigated some significant V2X use cases and conducted a risk assessment on a selection of these use cases. These significant use cases were discovered by performing semi-structured interviews with five candidates within the field. The conducted risk assessment was performed according to a method called Threat, Vulnerability, and Risk Assessment (TVRA), which ETSI has developed. The results of this thesis work became a set of safety-functional use cases that were considered significant. The cybersecurity risk varied and spanned from critical to minor risk concerning the attacks taken into account. Since security and hardening are critical aspects of automotive connectivity, this thesis provides some future research directions at the end of this thesis. One of these topics is, for example, the privacy perspective on V2X, which was not considered in this thesis