The European Auto Association has targeted they will not produce diesel engines in 2025 and totally stop the production of petrol engines by 2030.
From now onwards you will see more electric vehicles (EVs) coming to the market.
Even Japan has announced in 2035 that they will stop producing ICE vehicles and as you know that Japan is also looking at hydrogen cars besides EVs.
However I am not sure whether Third World countries will be ready for this change.
Even developing countries like India has many vehicles that are more than 20 years old that are still running on the road.
Another point is that India has passed the End of Life vehicle regulation but never manages to enforce it due to the economic situation.
This is the same case as in Malaysia whereby the Malaysia Automotive Robotics and IoT Institute (MARii) tried to introduce but never took off.
Coming back to the future of 'connected' vehicles, I would like to highlight by 2025, connected vehicles will comprise 86% of the global market.
Vehicle manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla have already made connectivity the norm in new vehicles.
Even brands like Renault/Nissan, Mitsubishi, Fiat, Chrysler and others will be heading in the same direction by 2022. Even Proton has done so with the X70 and X50.
What constitutes a 'connected' vehicle? It is defined when a vehicle shares data between servers, apps, smart mobility and more telematics services.
There are five primary modes of vehicle connectivity:-
> Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I).
> Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V).
> Vehicle to Cloud (V2C).
> Vehicle to Pedestrian (V2P).
> Vehicle to Everything (V2X).
Why should we worry now? As by 2030, 30% of businesses may rely on data enabled services and shared mobility and the cyber landscape threat (malware) is growing as in 2011 there were 65 million threats to roughly about 1.1 billion in 2020.
Data is a new commodity as according to Intel CEO - Brian Krzanick, autonomous vehicles will consume about 40 terabytes of data in an eight-hour drive.
Even the FBI assessed the automotive industry will face cyber threats and malicious activities as the vast amount of data collected by internet connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles becomes a high value target.
Eventually cybercrime including automotive-related cybercrime will be more profitable globally than the global drug trade.
Cybercrime is estimated at USD$600bil versus the US$400bil drug trade.
Cyber threats in the automotive ecosystem are worrying as the potential direct impact on road users safety and security.
Without effective cyber security, connected vehicles will be prone to remote attacks which might lead to physical danger.
Image the cyber attack on fleet wide vehicles could result in numerous injuries or deaths and in worse case scenarios multiple deaths.
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), smart mobility service providers and transport industries will be one of the five main target industries.
Right now there are various forums on detailed discussion on 'How to Attack' connected vehicles, 'How to access sensitive data', 'How to take over vehicles' or 'How to steal vehicles'.
This is apparent in the new modus operandi where they steal vehicles via the 'On-Board Diagnostics (OBD)' or 'Keyless Entry Attack'.
According to the police, they said that Keyless Entry Attack is not prevalent in Malaysia as they have no conclusive evidence of such an attack!
READ MORE: Sony controls vehicle 2,500km away via 5G
The stolen vehicles are never recovered. Even if the vehicles are recovered, are there IT-savvy officers to conduct a post mortem?
The break that police will have is when they catch the thieves and learn their knowledge on how they stole vehicles.
Like in the case of catalytic converter theft and when no one reports, the police assumes no such theft.
So how serious are cyber attacks in automotive?
Last year, India had 4,118 vehicles stolen due to cheap security devices (Malaysia is not exempted too).
In last year too, a Tesla Model X was hacked.
Another hacker was able to gain control over Tesla's entire connected fleet by exploiting a vulnerability in the OEM server side mechanism.
So who are attacking? Basically there are two types of hackers. The White Hats and Black Hats.
The White Hats (researchers) are hired to test the company's vulnerability while the Black Hats do it for ransom.
It is estimated that White Hats hackers constitute 45.8% and Black Hats hackers constitute 49.3% while the rest are 4.9% others.
How do the hackers get into your system?
There are three most common attacks by way of OEM Servers, Keyless Entry system and Mobile Apps.
Here are some of the break down attack method:-
> 32.94% via the Servers.
> 26.62% via Keyless Entry.
> 9.90% via Mobile App.
> 8.36% via OBD.
> 7% via Infotainment.
> 3.58% via Bluetooth.
The most glaring incident a few years ago was when a White Hat managed to attack the servers and gain control of an OEM entire connected fleet exposing Tesla server which Command and Controls that communicated with Tesla fleet including remote commands and diagnostic information.
So is Malaysia ready and prepared for cyber attacks? How can Malaysia defend itself?
Alex Lye
President
International Association of Automotive Theft Investigators (IAATI)
Asian Branch
