A Lightweight Threat Analysis Approach Intertwining Safety and Security for the Automotive Domain

Abstract

The automotive industry relies increasingly on computer technology in their cars, which malicious attackers can exploit. Therefore, the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) have to adopt security engineering practices in their development efforts, in addition to their safety engineering efforts. In particular, information assets that can undermine safety have to be identified and protected. Assessing the safety relevance of specific information assets is best done by safety engineers, who, unfortunately, often do not have the security expertise to do so. In this paper, we propose a technique for identifying information assets and protection goals that are relevant for safety. Our method is based on security guide-words, which allow a structured identification of possible attack scenarios. The method is similar to the Hazard and Operability Study (HAZOP) in safety for eliciting possible faults. The similarity of the approach shall ease the effort for non-security engineers to identify information assets and protection goals to allow an exchange between safety and security mindsets. In contrary to other proposed methods, we performed an evaluation of our technique to show their practical application. In our evaluation with a total of 30 employees of an automotive supplier and employees of the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, results show that all non-security engineers achieved for precision, productivity and sensitivity, on average, higher values than the security control group.