The Mitsubishi Electric Technology of Cyber Defense for the connected cars

2019: Main characteristics of technology

On February 4, 2019 the Mitsubishi Electric corporation announced creation of technology of the multilevel protection against cyber attacks for the cars (Connected Cars) connected to information networks implemented via the head device of the car. According to the developer, in the conditions of the growing popularity of cars with a connectivity to external information networks development of the company will allow to provide safe use of such machines.

As noted in Mitsubishi Electric, vehicles having function of network connection can be connected to the Internet and/or mobile devices, for example, to smartphones that does them potentially vulnerable for cyber attacks. At worst the malefactor can intercept control of machine far off. The technology of multilevel protection Mitsubishi Electric prevents cyber attacks, using the reliable instruments of protection against invasions which are not loading the system and function of safe loading which is quickly checking integrity of the software.

Main characteristics mentioned by the developer:

• The technology allows to reveal cyber attacks to a management system and the head device of the car. The security technology developed by Mitsubishi Electric allows to optimize data analysis process, selecting only suspicious actions.
• Function of fast loading (Fast Secure Boot) works for 10% quicker in comparison with the traditional sequence and provides fast and safe data loading which checks integrity of the software of the car which is built in the head device.
• The developed technology of multilevel protection provides the reliable security level thanks to increase in level of security of the head device of the car which is the main communication channel of the car with the Internet. Developers took as a basis technology of detection of cyber attacks for crucial infrastructure facilities of power supply, gas supply, water supply, chemical and fuel industry and adapted it for application in the field of motor transport.

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• Often cyber attacks form harmful teams which are impracticable for distinguishing from management system commands. The existing methods of detection of the attacks based on comparison of the incoming traffic with the known examples of suspicious events require considerable time and overload a system. Mitsubishi Electric developed the technology of detection of cyber attacks for IT systems recognizing only potentially harmful commands. This technology was applied on cars without additional requirements to computing powers of the systems of the car, explained in Mitsubishi Electric.
• Function of the operational protected data loading (Fast Secure Boot) allows to check integrity of the software in loading process. According to the developer, the similar method is applied long ago, but the lack of the normal protected loading is that on data processing considerable time as it is necessary to check all elements of the software leaves. To solve this problem, Mitsubishi Electric reduced volume requiring data validation, having focused on the main parts of the software. As a result the developed technology requires less than 10% of time of traditional loading.