Security Analysis of Volvo’s Infotainment System

Abstract: Today’s car development is progressing rapidly, and new car models are constantly being produced. These new vehicles are adapted to today’s digital society and all its needs. An important issue is how well security is involved in this technological development. With all these successes, there are also possible vulnerabilities. Thus, the cybersecurity aspect is a crucial part in the development of modern vehicles due to possible exploitation that have taken place and can take place in the future. The main problem researched within this thesis was to investigate the safety of Volvo’s Vehicle Infotainment System (IV). To analyze such a complex system, a threat model was created by gathering necessary data, inspecting a physical rig sent by the manufacturer, and receiving feedback from industry experts. Furthermore, several attack simulations were performed on the threat model, generating several attack paths and probabilistic graphs that were analyzed. This work resulted in a threat model that represented the physical IV. The model included identifications of interesting entry points from which an attacker can start different attacks. After investigation, the Bluetooth network and the operating system of the Infotainment Head Unit (IHU) were both chosen as entry points for the attack simulations. The attack simulations made on the model were tested in different scenarios because this resulted in a more comprehensive outcome. The results of the attack simulations were that in comparison to a low- security scenario, the high-security cases decreased the success rate of compromising the targeted asset. However, enabling every possible defenses, there were no attack paths generated, but the results showed that an attacker still can perform other sorts of attacks. It is concluded that if one assumes that the threat model within this work is somewhat identical to the physical IV, there is a possibility of exploiting vulnerabilities if not all defenses are enabled for all components. These results are sought to increase the relevancy of the cybersecurity aspects within the vehicle industry, especially on infotainment systems.