‘Holy Grail of Hacking’ in Growing Number of Connected Cars on Road, Says IHS

IHS Markit estimates about a third of the vehicles on U.S. roads have connectivity through embedded telematics control units (TCUs), Colin Bird, senior analyst-automotive technology, told a Wednesday webinar on the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of connected cars. “Nearly every vehicle” in production “is being equipped with some sort of TCU,” so by 2023, 85 percent of “the entire vehicle parc will be connected,” said Bird of the registered U.S. fleet. “That’s really the holy grail of hacking.” Fiat Chrysler’s July 2015 recall of 1.4 million vehicles to install software to protect against data breaches was the first National Highway Traffic Safety Administration action taken “for cybersecurity-related issues,” and it was a “wake-up call” for the automotive industry, said Bird. “Since that happened, every RFQ for an infotainment unit or TCU has had a cybersecurity requirement,” he said of OEM requests for quotations. With the increasing “complexity” of in-car electronics, “there’s a lot of different ways to get into the vehicle, a lot of things to protect here,” he said. He cited an Audi A8, which is equipped with “more than 88 high-powered CPUs” and runs up to 30 million “lines” of binary code, including 4 million lines of code just in the “steering component.” IHS estimates more than half the total cost of a high-end vehicle, including R&D and “validation,” is “related to electronic components or software,” he said.