A Security Metric for Structured Security Analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems Supporting SAE J3061

The complexity in modern vehicles has increased dramatically during the last years due to new features and applications. Modern vehicles are connected to the internet as well as the other vehicles in close proximity and the environment to offer different novel comfort services and safety related applications. Enabling such services and applications requires wireless interfaces to the vehicle and therefore leads to open interfaces to the outside world. Attackers can use those interfaces to impair the privacy of the vehicle owner or to take control (of parts of) the vehicle, which strongly endangers the safety of the passengers as well as other road users. To avoid such attacks and to ensure the safety of modern vehicles, sophisticated structured processes and methods are needed.

In this paper we propose a security metric to analyse cyber-physical systems in a structured way. Its application leads to a secure system configuration with comparable as well as reusable results. Additionally, the security metric can be used to support the conceptual phase specified in the new SAE security standard SAE J3061. A case study has been carried out to illustrate the application of the security metric.