"Bolstering Resilience against Cyberattacks on Autonomous Cars"

RMIT University is a partner in SELFY, a new European research project aimed at improving the safety of digitally connected vehicles. By 2026, approximately 50 million connected and autonomous cars are expected to circulate in Europe as part of a Cooperative Connected Autonomous Mobility (CCAM) ecosystem in which road users interact not only with one another but also with other elements of the transportation infrastructure. CCAM is considered a way to improve road traffic coordination, for example, by providing real-time data about driving conditions or upcoming congestion on the highway. However, increased digital connectivity raises the risk of malicious system attacks, such as cyberattacks or cyberterrorism events, which have the potential to disrupt mobility and cause harm. SELFY is the first European-funded research collaboration between project coordinator Eurecat and RMIT since their partnership began in May 2021. RMIT will co-supervise a researcher alongside the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt in Germany and contribute expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based techniques to detect cyberattacks in large-scale distributed systems. SELFY will create collaborative tools to improve the security, protection, and resilience of the CCAM environment in the face of cyberattacks or malicious actions. These tools will help detect vulnerable vehicles and security breaches. Following laboratory validation of the tools, the project team will construct three scenarios in realistic, controlled environments to demonstrate their performance and effectiveness. With European regulations requiring cybersecurity certificates for digitally connected vehicles, the research team anticipates that the toolbox will be adopted by various traffic and infrastructure management organizations, thus providing road users with self-awareness, resilience, and trust. This article continues to discuss the new research collaboration seeking to protect digitally connected vehicles from cyberattacks.   

RMIT University reports "Bolstering Resilience against Cyberattacks on Autonomous Cars"