Digital Forensic Investigation of Automotive Systems: Requirements and Challenges

Abstract

With the increasing complexity of vehicle architecture and interconnection between the vehicle and other entities, many problems arise, such as cyber attacks. Accidents can be caused by hardware or software failures, intentional or unintentional incidents. Automotive Digital Forensics (ADF) is used for determine the cause of accidents and usually includes processes like data collection, data analysis, data preservation and documentation. ADF is a relatively new field and is not well-researched. The lack of common and unified industry guidelines and standards makes ADF challenging. We have investigated previous work within the automotive and similar areas, with the aim of identifying parts applicable to ADF, such as forensic mechanisms, guidelines, standards, fulfilment of security properties, and data extraction and verification. Furthermore, we propose a framework that considers the entire life cycle of ADF.