A systematic mapping study on security countermeasures of in-vehicle communication systems

TL;DR

This systematic mapping study reviews 279 papers on security countermeasures for in-vehicle communication systems, highlighting recent research trends, gaps, and areas needing further investigation to enhance vehicle cybersecurity.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current research, identifies gaps in subtopics like Ethernet security and anomaly detection, and offers insights to guide future research directions.

Findings

Rapid increase in research publications in recent years

Identified gaps in automotive Ethernet security and anomaly reaction

Provides a high-level overview of research activities and trends

Abstract

The innovations of vehicle connectivity have been increasing dramatically to enhance the safety and user experience of driving, while the rising numbers of interfaces to the external world also bring security threats to vehicles. Many security countermeasures have been proposed and discussed to protect the systems and services against attacks. To provide an overview of the current states in this research field, we conducted a systematic mapping study on the topic area "security countermeasures of in-vehicle communication systems". 279 papers are identified based on the defined study identification strategy and criteria. We discussed four research questions related to the security countermeasures, validation methods, publication patterns, and research trends and gaps based on the extracted and classified data. Finally, we evaluated the validity threats, the study identification results, and the whole mapping process. We found that the studies in this topic area are increasing rapidly in recent years. However, there are still gaps in various subtopics like automotive Ethernet security, anomaly reaction, and so on. This study reviews the target field not only related to research findings but also research activities, which can help identify research gaps at a high level and inspire new ideas for future work.