In future, car-to-X or V2X technology will be at the heart of real-life driving situations. All the actors and components involved in road traffic communicate with one another to share information about traffic and hazards. The main objectives of this technology are to improve road safety and traffic flow, as well as to save energy and reduce fuel consumption.

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Prerequisites for connected driving

Connected driving is about collecting, processing (classifying) and responding to information, and making it available to the other actors and components involved in road traffic. This highly sensitive system is heavily dependent on a whole host of external interfaces, control devices and, above all, enormous data flows. If they were to be manipulated or suffer a technical failure, in the worst-case scenario it could cost lives.

Potential target for hackers: a connected vehicle's interfaces

In future, there will be a range of communication technologies available for exchanging data, such as WLAN (IEEE 802.11p) or 5G. Cryptographic mechanisms like digital signatures, which are shared between a sender and recipient before being securely stored and managed, form the cornerstone of IT security in this expanded/newly built transport and communication infrastructure.

A manipulation-proof and fail-safe IT infrastructure is a prerequisite for improving road safety.

New technologies such as blockchain, which do away with the need for central monitoring bodies, could be useful for certain road traffic applications when data has to be stored and accessed in a way that cannot be counterfeited (e.g. billing for the electricity consumed at charging stations). With blockchain, the data that needs to be processed is managed in a decentralised network, where it cannot be manipulated, but it can be accessed by all actors involved in road traffic.

Watch BSI expert Dr Christian Wieschebrink talk about connected cars:

Connected driving technologies: sensors, car-to-X, PKI and C-ITS

If you think of a vehicle as a living organism, the sensors basically perceive what is happening and turn this information into electrical pulses in the same way an organism's senses do – in other words, they are essential for responding to what is going on around it. On vehicles, these sensors are the safety and assistance systems that drivers are already familiar with today, which beep and flash to help us drive our cars. The way in which these environmental sensors interact in turn provides a foundation for vehicles to communicate with one another and with all other parts of the transport infrastructure (car-to-X technology) – in other words, the foundation for connected driving. Here is an overview of the key technologies involved in connected driving:

Car-to-X technology

This is technology that securely processes and communicates data provided by road users and infrastructure. Its goal is to create an automated and dynamic communication network between the components concerned. The 5G mobile network standard that is in the pipeline, for example, will be fundamental for this new branch of the Internet of Things (IoT), which communicates in real time.

PKI (public key infrastructure)

A PKI (public key infrastructure) is a security system that allows digital signatures to be created and verified as a way of protecting communication. The central feature of connected driving is that messages are exchanged electronically in order to share safety-relevant information about current traffic situations with other vehicles and transmit it to other road users or infrastructure components. The information to be transmitted is furnished with digital signatures by means of the PKI; this means the entity receiving the message can verify it unequivocally and the message is protected against being manipulated by an external party.

C-ITS

C-ITS (cooperative intelligent transport systems) describes roads where vehicles and transport infrastructure are fully connected. The delivery of data is key: in a cooperative system, data is made available to all road users so they can coordinate their response to particular traffic situations in good time. The gradual introduction of cooperative transport systems is currently being trialled on a test route that runs from Rotterdam to Vienna via Germany. Applications that give early warnings about temporary roadworks and improve traffic management are currently being tested in real-world traffic conditions on this C-ITS corridor.

Potential gateways for hackers: a connected vehicle's interfaces

Collecting, processing and communicating data: the transport of tomorrow

Early warning systems and a coordinated response to hazardous situations can improve road safety, driver comfort and traffic flow. But this requires an enormous amount of data, which vehicles and other components of the transport infrastructure have to collate, process and send on. The fundamental importance of protecting these huge data volumes from being accessed or manipulated must not be lost amongst all the excitement about new transport concepts: the only way to win the trust of users and consumers is to ensure IT security.

The experts say it will be a little while yet before we see fully automated driving, since before automation comes the connectivity phase. What's more, autonomous vehicles not only have to respond appropriately to other road users, they also have to deal with changing and difficult weather conditions – at the moment, the technology does not seem able to handle this complexity well enough.

Although certain manufacturers may have announced they will start producing a driverless fleet of car or bicycle taxis, for example, we are still decades away from it being the norm for a vehicle to drive its entire route fully autonomously.