Firmware Over the Air for Securely Updating ECUs of the Vehicle

Introduction: An automobile is a software-defined machine on top of the wheels including more than 100 electronic control units (ECU) with million lines of code. The integration of ECU in the automobile ensures the customer’s needs by providing safety, security, entertainment, and comfort features. Methods: The firmware integrated into the ECU should be updated to avoid latency in operation and bugs, and to add new features. The traditional update process of ECU holds loopholes like more waiting time, unavailability of service centers, and security threats. To overcome this, over-the-air (OTA) updates are introduced in the vehicle, but security is the major concern while transmitting firmware over the air. Results: The proposed system ensures the wireless firmware update with the uptane framework with background Timestamp Update Framework (TUF) ensures the security. The timestamp generated is valid for 86400 seconds to validate the freshness. In addition, security assessment and reverse engineering are performed on the designed system to check for security breaches. Conclusion: The system secures the firmware over arbitrary and replay attacks on the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) server.