UniSUF: a unified software update framework for vehicles utilizing isolation techniques and trusted execution environments

Abstract

Today’s vehicles depend more and more on software, and can contain over 100M lines of code controlling many safety-critical functions, such as steering and brakes. Increased complexity in software inherently increases the number of bugs affecting vehicle safety-critical functions. Consequently, software updates need to be applied regularly. Current research around vehicle software update solutions is lacking necessary details for a versatile, unified and secure approach that covers various update scenarios, e.g., over-the-air, with a workshop computer, at factory production or using a diagnostic update tool. We propose UniSUF, a Unified Software Update Framework for Vehicles, well aligned with automotive industry stakeholders. All data needed for a complete software update is securely encapsulated into one single file. This vehicle unique file can be processed in multitudes of update scenarios and executed without any external connectivity since all data is inherently secured. To the best of our knowledge, this comprehensive, versatile and unified approach cannot be found in previous research and is a contribution to an essential requirement within the industry for handling the increasing complexity related to vehicle software updates.