Category: Blog

1 November, 2022 . 5 mins read

Spotlight: V2X Interoperability Testing at OmniAir Costa del Sol Plugfest

In this blog, Vice President of Autocrypt North America, Martin Totev, takes us to OmniAir Consortium’s Costa del Sol Plugfest in Malaga, Spain, held between October 24 and 28, where AUTOCRYPT provided its SCMS certificates for the testing environment.

Interoperability Across the V2X Ecosystem

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) are making road mobility increasingly connected and adaptive, linking vehicles with road infrastructures and pedestrians, and enabling them to cooperate with one another in real-time through V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communications. Yet, although the idea might seem straightforward, industry players and regulators have been putting tremendous effort into establishing V2X interoperability, ensuring that vehicles, smart devices, and infrastructures built by different manufacturers across various domains can seamlessly communicate with each other.

How is interoperability established? At the baseline, all manufacturers must follow a set of standards and protocols for each relevant use case. These protocols are often established by regulators and industry associations. For instance, the two major technical protocols for V2X communications include WAVE (Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments) by IEEE and C-V2X (cellular V2X) by 5GAA. As such, manufacturers of onboard units (OBU) and roadside units (RSU) need to ensure that all their end-entities within a V2X environment comply with the same protocol to enable reliable message transmission.

Similarly, the technical standard for electric vehicle charging is outlined in ISO 15118, which defines the architecture for Plug&Charge (PnC) and V2G (vehicle-to-grid) bidirectional charging, providing a set of consistent specifications and guidelines for OEMs, charger manufacturers, and charge point operators (CPO) to promote a seamless EV charging ecosystem.

Why Protocols Aren’t Enough: The Need for V2X Interoperability Testing

Simply because two manufacturers follow the same standard or protocol, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that their devices will be perfectly compatible with each other under actual implementation. As a simplified example, the standard for a universal plug may specify the width but lacks specification on the length, resulting in plugs with different lengths being incompatible despite adhering to the same standard. In practice, incompatibility issues can be much more complex, arising from a variety of underlying factors that can be difficult to pinpoint.

Given that the V2X ecosystem involves a wide range of end-entities across different domains, interoperability testing is necessary prior to mass deployment. These tests are usually conducted at a plugtest (or plugfest), which invites all relevant manufacturers to deploy their vehicles and devices in combined scenarios.

OmniAir Plugfest

OmniAir Consortium is one of the most influential associations in the C-ITS industry. It specializes in promoting interoperability between different connected entities within the V2X ecosystem, including the vehicle itself, onboard units (OBU) and roadside units (RSU), embedded communication modules, and security modules and SCMS backends.

OmniAir Consortium regularly organizes interoperability testing events—known as OmniAir Plugfests—to provide a platform for industry participants to test the cross-domain interoperability of their connected mobility technologies and devices. The most recent Costa del Sol Plugfest was held between October 24 and 28 in Malaga, Spain.

Opening ceremony of the Costa del Sol Plugfest

A wide range of bench tests were performed at the Costa del Sol Plugfest, including those involving V2X modules, message encryption, V2X-PKI certificates, SPaT message transmissions, and MAP message transmissions. Specific use cases like red light violation warning, emergency vehicle preemption, lane closure warning, curve speed warning, and many more, were tested on the field. One of the industry’s major testing and inspection firms, DEKRA, provided its testbed for the event.

As one of the more than 60 associate members of the OmniAir Consortium, and a C-ITS cybersecurity provider specialized in securing V2X connections, the AUTOCRYPT team headed to Malaga to participate in the plugfest by providing AUTOCRYPT’s SCMS certificates to the devices tested at the event.

The AUTOCRYPT team testing our SCMS certificates at Dekra’s testbed

Is C-V2X Ready?

Vice President of Autocrypt North America, Martin Totev, presented at a panel session discussing whether C-V2X is ready to be deployed for commercial use. Martin expressed his optimism on C-V2X commercialization and stressed a step-by-step deployment approach. “It doesn’t need to be mass deployment and autonomous driving straight away,” said Martin. “We can begin by deploying them in vehicles first, then intersections with frequent accidents, gradually enhancing road safety and saving lives in the long run.”

Martin also pointed out the importance of cybersecurity in V2X. “Although interoperability testing is crucial, it only marks the beginning of a continuous improvement process. In fact, more commercial deployments are needed so that security and SCMS providers like AUTOCRYPT can continuously enhance its regional security policies and strengthen its definitions for misbehaviours.”

VP of Autocrypt North America, Martin Totev, speaking about C-V2X deployment

AUTOCRYPT’s Pivotal Role in the V2X Ecosystem

AUTOCRYPT specializes in securing V2X communications. Given that vehicles rely on V2X messages for judgment and decision-making, the validity of these messages is critical to the safety and functionality of cooperative autonomous driving.

AUTOCRYPT secures V2X communications using both encryption and authentication technologies. On the frontend, a security module is embedded into each end-entity to encrypt and decrypt messages by referring to a list of SCMS certificates stored in a Local Certificate Manager (LCM). At the backend, its SCMS architecture enables the proper issuance, revocation, and verification of certificates, ensuring message validity and privacy.

To learn more about AUTOCRYPT’s V2X security solutions, contact global@autocrypt.io.

To stay informed and updated on the latest news about AUTOCRYPT and mobility tech, subscribe to AUTOCRYPT’s quarterly newsletter.

20 October, 2022 . 6 mins read

More Public Chargers? Not Too Fast: The Growing Need to Securely Manage EV Charging Infrastructure

Electric vehicles (EV) are some of the hottest items today across the automotive and tech industries. With EV adoption accelerating year by year, there is no doubt now that EVs are on their way to take over the automotive market. However, with new EV releases and feature updates gathering all the spotlights, a complementary market — the market for EV charging infrastructure — is often overlooked.

EV charging infrastructure, or EV supply equipment (EVSE), refers to the charging stations and charging points that supply electricity to an EV’s battery. Clearly, the development and commercialization of EVs and EV charging infrastructure must go hand in hand. Knowing that EVs cannot thrive without decent charging infrastructure, automotive OEMs are constantly working with charger manufacturers and charge point operators (CPO) to bring smarter and faster charging infrastructure to the market, creating an environment that enables EVs to reach their maximum potential.

The question is: is the EVSE industry prepared to fulfill the massive influx of EVs over the coming years?

Private vs. Public Charging Infrastructure

Although a privately owned home charger is most likely the primary charger for the average EV owner, the long-term sustainability of the EV market depends heavily on the availability of public charging infrastructure. With a significant portion of urban residents living in apartments and condos with shared parking garages, public chargers must be adequately established to fulfill the growing charging demands. Moreover, for the times when longer trips are made, public EV chargers must be easily accessible en route. Therefore, to enable a seamless EV user experience, public charging infrastructure must be established on a wide scale.

The development and deployment process for private and public chargers vary significantly. Unlike a home charger, which simply contains electrical conductors and their related equipment, a public charger is much more complex, containing software for processing account information and billing, and communication protocols that deliver data between the vehicle and the charger. These software-enabled features make them more expensive and time-consuming to deploy and maintain.

The Current State of Public Charging Infrastructure

Overall, the market for public EV charging infrastructure has been growing at a steady rate. As of 2021, the United States has about 115,000 publicly accessible EV charging points, just surpassing its number of gas stations. Realizing that public charging infrastructure is crucial to EV adoption and achieving carbon emission targets, President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has dedicated $7.5 billion to developing publicly accessible EV charging points, with the goal of installing 500,000 additional public EV chargers compatible with all kinds of vehicles by 2030.

However, are 500,000 additional public chargers enough to fulfill the forecasted growth of EVs? To put the numbers in perspective, the US has a goal of cutting its road transport carbon emission by half in 2030. To reach this target, roughly one in every two new cars sold in 2030 must be an EV. However, according to research by McKinsey, if half of all new vehicles sold were to be EVs in 2030, the US would need 1.2 million public EV chargers by that year, meaning that even with 500,000 additional public chargers deployed, the total number will still fall short by nearly 600,000 units.

Then is it time to further accelerate public charger deployment? Ideally, yes. But not too fast.

The Challenges of Deploying Public Charging Infrastructure

A critical flaw of the current charging infrastructure development plan is that it puts too much emphasis on numbers, neglecting an important fact—the number of chargers isn’t all that matters. In fact, a recent survey conducted by J.D. Power revealed that among the 11,550 American EV drivers surveyed, one in five people reported not being able to charge their car during their visit to a public charging station. Among all the failed cases, 72% of them were attributed to nonfunctional equipment.

This clearly demonstrates that chasing numbers won’t guarantee promising results. It is pointless to have 500,000 chargers if 100,000 of them don’t work. Imagine the frustration of running low on battery and coming to the only available charger within range, only to discover that it does not work. If a one-in-five failure rate is not significant enough to raise an alarm, remember that most public EV chargers are built within the last several years; if nothing is done to address this issue, it is only a matter of time before more chargers end up dysfunctional.

Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that operating and maintaining an EV charging station is completely different from operating a gas station. Since charging takes much longer than filling gas, a much greater number of charging stations are needed than gas stations, making it impossible to staff them all. This makes it difficult for CPOs to monitor and maintain their charging points. A wide range of issues may arise in poorly maintained EV chargers, such as broken connectors, power failures, network failures, payment system failures, and unresponsive screens.

How a Charging Station Management System Can Help

A Charging Station Management System (CSMS) is a system software that connects to the Charge Point Operation Server (CPOS), which hosts all the applications built into the chargers. The CSMS collects real-time information on all chargers within the charging network. By doing so, it allows the CPO to monitor all its public chargers in real-time and respond to any errors or malfunctions immediately to guarantee service satisfaction. System and security updates can also be performed remotely on a timely basis. Depending on the service scope of the CSMS provider, CPOs can also utilize a CSMS to manage their customer accounts and billing information.

Additionally, the CSMS offers more potential benefits beyond charging station management. The charger data it collects can be used to provide a variety of customer-oriented EV charging information services. For instance, AUTOCRYPT has utilized the data it collected from its CSMS to operate a charger locator map in South Korea that provides real-time charger information such as location, availability, plug type, and price.

With the help of a CSMS, CPOs can deploy larger numbers of charging points across a wide range of locations without sacrificing service quality, while saving costs in the long run. By providing a secure and seamless charging experience for EV users, it helps create an EV-friendly environment that encourages continuous adoption.

AUTOCRYPT’s EVIQ is an EV charging and management solution centered around its CSMS, providing a comprehensive management platform for CPOs. At the same time, AUTOCRYPT offers a Plug&Charge (PnC) security module in compliance with ISO 15118, ready to be integrated with the PnC server, bringing security and convenience to both the CPO and its customers.

To learn more about AUTOCRYPT’s EV charging security and management solutions, contact global@autocrypt.io.

To stay informed and updated on the latest news about AUTOCRYPT and mobility tech, subscribe to AUTOCRYPT’s quarterly newsletter.

13 October, 2022 . 6 mins read

Pedestrian Safety Month: How to Achieve Zero Road Fatality with V2X?

In 2020, the US Department of Transportation (DOT)’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) designated October as National Pedestrian Safety Month, celebrating the right to safety for every user of the road. The goal is to raise public awareness and strengthen efforts on improving road safety, with an emphasis on protecting vulnerable road users (VRU). VRUs include any road user that is not protected by a metal frame, such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists.

The Current Stance of Road Safety

According to the latest statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 1.3 million people across the globe die every year from road traffic incidents, with another 20 to 50 million people suffering non-fatal injuries, many of which lead to permanent disabilities.

The good news is that in most of the developed world, the number of road fatalities has seen a steady decrease over time. This pattern is especially salient in Europe; the road fatality figure of the European Union has more than halved from 51,400 deaths recorded in 2001 to 19,800 deaths in 2021. Based on the trajectory, the EU is targeting less than 11,400 annual deaths by 2030.

Beyond Europe, a similar downward trend can be seen in other developed countries like Japan, Canada, Korea, and Australia. In fact, the United States is the only country among advanced economies where road fatality saw an increase over the past decade.

This leads us to the bad news. Unfortunately—just like the United States—many parts of the world are not seeing a decrease in road fatality, meaning that the world is becoming increasingly polarized in terms of road safety. Today, 93% of the world’s road fatalities happen in less developed countries. By working with the above figures, it can be derived that road fatality in the EU only accounts for 1.5% of the global figure, despite its population representing 5.6% of world population.

Reasons for Road Traffic Accidents

To improve road safety, the best measure is to tackle the causes of traffic accidents and prevent them in the first place. To most daily drivers, operating a vehicle can feel like a subconscious task. Despite so, driving requires an intensive amount of data processing in the subconscious mind, with countless perception-judgment cycles happening every minute. One error in any of the two processes can lead to dangerous situations and potential accidents.

As expected, most errors leading to accidents are human mistakes or flaws. For instance, errors in perception can occur under low visibility, often a result of poor weather conditions or complicated terrain. Perception errors can also be caused by a lack of attention on the road due to smartphone distraction or mental stress. Similarly, judgment errors can be caused by sleep deprivation or alcohol consumption.

Oftentimes, a fatal crash isn’t the result of a driver’s error, but an error made by a vulnerable road user. For instance, a lot of road fatalities are the result of pedestrians and cyclists disobeying signals. Hence, improving road safety requires collective efforts from all road users.

Efforts to Reduce Road Traffic Accidents

By studying the potential reasons and scenarios that could result in traffic accidents, the transportation sector and the automotive industry have made a lot of preventative and protective efforts. Thanks to these efforts, many countries have managed to reduce road fatality at a steady rate.

The most significant effort is the adoption of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in newer vehicles. Features like blind spot detection, lane keep assist, collision alert, and emergency braking have contributed to a great reduction in crashes. In recent years, OEMs and ADAS suppliers have further strengthened the capability of sensor and AI-based object recognition technologies to achieve a driving automation level of L2 and up to L3. Tesla’s Autopilot is one of the most marketed examples.

Other preventative measures have also been made, such as enforcing lower speed limits, increasing penalties for traffic law violations, and more spending on educating road safety to the public. Conventional protective measures have also seen great improvements, with safer airbags and vehicle structures that are better capable of absorbing crash energy.

Why Are These Efforts Not Enough?

Although ADAS adoption has demonstrated great results in reducing traffic accidents, its influence is limited to more advanced economies. Since the cost of ADAS is mostly distributed to end consumers, most consumers in low- and mid-income economies may find it too expensive to purchase a new vehicle with all the ADAS features. This explains why most of the reduction in road fatality was observed in high-income economies.

Besides being expensive, sensors have their limitations. Regardless of the amount of machine learning fed into the algorithm, in the end, sensors are just like the human eye, which must see and identify an object before making judgments. This makes sensors prone to distortion and blind spots.

Then what else can we do to achieve zero road fatality? Perhaps we can take a look at the commercial aviation industry, which has achieved zero fatality almost every year throughout the past decade. Of course, comparing road traffic with air traffic is comparing apples to oranges. Still, one thing we can learn from air traffic coordination is that it does not rely on visibility. Decisions and flight paths are determined through wireless communication.

Why Is V2X the Ultimate Answer to Achieving Zero Road Fatality?

Wireless communication for road traffic is called V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) communication. This allows vehicles to seamlessly communicate with surrounding vehicles, road infrastructures, and even the handheld devices of vulnerable road users, to ensure that every participant on the road can receive real-time warnings and seamlessly cooperate through what is referred to as cooperative autonomous driving.

To enable V2X connectivity, a vehicle needs to be equipped with an onboard unit (OBU), while a roadside unit (RSU) needs to be installed into every relevant road infrastructure. Smartphones are also readily available V2X connectivity units, allowing vulnerable road users carrying smartphones to enroll in the V2X ecosystem. In general, V2X connectivity units are cheaper to install and deploy than ADAS, and their long-term maintenance costs are also lower.

In the short run, V2X is a great complementary measure to ADAS. Although equipping all road users and infrastructures with V2X may take decades, municipalities can begin by installing RSUs in areas with frequent accidents and areas dangerous to pedestrian safety.

By seeing the invisible and communicating information based on facts, V2X will be the ultimate answer to zero road fatality.

As an automotive cybersecurity and mobility solutions provider, AUTOCRYPT plays a crucial role in securing V2X communications. Its V2X solution is readily installable onto OBU/RSUs, consisting of a secure communication module, a PKI backend, an Integrated Management System for SCMS, along with a root CA service for the V2X-PKI ecosystem.

To learn more about AUTOCRYPT’s V2X security offerings, contact global@autocrypt.io.

To stay informed and updated on the latest news about AUTOCRYPT and mobility tech, subscribe to AUTOCRYPT’s quarterly newsletter.

29 September, 2022 . 5 mins read

Spotlight: Introducing IMS for SCMS at ITS World Congress 2022

This blog depicts an insider’s perspective of AUTOCRYPT’s trip to ITS World Congress 2022 in Los Angeles, where it unveiled its Integrated Management System (IMS) for SCMS – a central management tool for cross-region V2X-PKI certificate management.

Los Angeles, the city of the American dream. But besides palm trees, sunny beaches, and Hollywood, the city is also widely known for being a prime example of urban sprawl. As a city planned for and shaped by automobiles, LA is one of the most car-dependent metropolises in the world, with many of its residents facing painfully long and congested commutes. Like many other North American cities and suburbs, LA is in desperate need of smarter transportation infrastructures powered by transformative mobility technologies.

Transforming an established transport ecosystem isn’t an easy task, especially when it comes to road transport. Unlike a subway or bus system where all decisions can be made by one party, improving road transport requires multiple parties to make decisions on the same page and work at the same pace. Smart infrastructures are most effective when paired with smart cars, supported by compatible communications technologies.

The ITS World Congress was created for this purpose. Every year since 1994, the ITS World Congress gathers businesses, infrastructure operators, researchers, and policymakers at the frontier of ITS (intelligent transportation systems) development, to foster collaboration and partnerships among industry players to accelerate the commercialization of smart mobility technologies.

Rotating worldwide between major ITS tech hubs for 28 years straight, the ITS World Congress made its way to LA this year, bringing AUTOCRYPT to the city for the first time. As a tech leader in Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), AUTOCRYPT returned to this year’s event to showcase its Integrated Management System (IMS) for SCMS.

ITS World Congress 2022 held in LA Convention Center

From ITS to C-ITS

It might be a surprise that the term “intelligent transportation systems (ITS)” existed all the way back in the 90s, when the Internet barely reached the average home. Clearly, efforts to improve transportation using technologies have always been made. Yet, conventional ITS technologies mainly focused on traffic control, which isn’t enough to significantly improve road transport. In fact, traffic congestion and road fatality only worsened as urban population continued to grow across the globe.

With advancements in IoT and communications technologies, the idea of Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) took off, centered around the goal of enabling real-time cooperation between different road participants – including vehicles, infrastructures, and pedestrians – by utilizing V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication technology.

C-ITS offers tremendous potential in the commercialization of full (L5) autonomous driving. Unlike camera and object recognition technologies, V2X enables Cooperative Autonomous Driving, allowing all vehicles and infrastructure to share and process real-time information long before cameras and lidars see things happen. Today, more and more industry professionals agree that V2X is the ultimate path towards full autonomous driving.

Given its potential, C-ITS technologies have gradually become the center of attention at the ITS World Congress, with many OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and software providers looking to expand their V2X capabilities. As a pioneer in securing V2X communications, AUTOCRYPT joins the ITS World Congress every year to share its latest technologies for C-ITS.

“Compared to the past, we are seeing more businesses joining the C-ITS ecosystem. It’s great to see a wide range of industry players and governments come together to accelerate developments for Cooperative Autonomous Driving,” said Esther Jeohn, AUTOCRYPT’s Marketing Director, “We are glad that more and more partners are joining us to put efficiency, sustainability, and zero fatality on the priority list.”

AUTOCRYPT connecting with industry partners at ITS World Congress 2022

AUTOCRYPT’s Integrated Management System (IMS) for SCMS

As the highlight of this year’s ITS World Congress, AUTOCRYPT unveiled its new Integrated Management System (IMS) for SCMS – a custom-built V2X-PKI certificate management tool that enables OEMs to monitor, supervise, and manage all the issued and revoked certificates for their vehicle fleets on a centralized user interface. A one-stop solution, IMS for SCMS enables admins to easily switch between regions and countries, compatible with the North American SCMS, the European C-ITS CMS (CCMS), and the Chinese C-SCMS.

The AUTOCRYPT team demonstrating IMS for SCMS to partners and clients

Sean Cho, President and CEO of Autocrypt North America, explained to partners at AUTOCRYPT’s booth, “As V2X connectivity becomes a standard feature for newer vehicles, OEMs are faced with the need to access and manage a massive number of V2X-PKI certificates issued to their fleets. IMS for SCMS eases this process, with customizable features to satisfy each unique need.”

With IMS for SCMS, OEMs will have the capability to manufacture and manage more V2X-enabled vehicles in the future, accelerating V2X implementation in the industry. To request a demo for IMS for SCMS, contact global@autocrypt.io.

Besides IMS for SCMS, AUTOCRYPT’s V2X security solution includes a V2X communications security module, a V2X-PKI backend, and root CA services for the SCMS ecosystem.

The AUTOCRYPT team concluding ITS World Congress 2022

To stay informed about future events and get updated on the latest mobility tech news, subscribe to AUTOCRYPT’s quarterly newsletter.

19 September, 2022 . 5 mins read

Spotlight: AUTOCRYPT’s Journey to the Detroit Auto Show

This blog details AUTOCRYPT’s participation in the North American International Auto Show in Detroit (Detroit Auto Show), where our Chief Communications Officer Jaeson Yoo and Global IR Director Yohan Lepoetre introduced AUTOCRYPT and its latest technologies at AutoMobili-D – a two-day preview event for industry professionals and stakeholders, centering around automotive and mobility tech.

As the automotive capital of the United States, Detroit lies at the center of the Great Lakes supercluster – the largest automotive manufacturing region of North America, connecting the automotive supply chains of Michigan and Ontario. Yet, the city is also known for its rapid shrinkage over the recent decades, making it a symbol of a declining automotive manufacturing sector in North America. Its population, sitting at about 630,000, is now less than one-third of its peak days.

But the decline of the manufacturing sector does not signify the end of the North American automotive industry. In fact, it is only the beginning of a new era, an era where the automotive industry is pushing its boundaries upwards from the manufacturing sector to the high-tech sector. With the addition of electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and connected mobility infrastructure and services, the new North American mobility industry is now more vibrant than ever.

Detroit Is Back

The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS, or the Detroit Auto Show) finally made its return this year after two consecutive cancelations from COVID-19. As one of the largest auto shows in the world, it is the primary go-to venue for automakers to unveil new products and concept cars, gathering OEMs, industry professionals, and car enthusiasts from across the globe. Each year, the event hosts up to 40,000 industry executives and 800,000 visitors.

The 2022 Detroit Auto Show at Huntington Place

Since 2017, the NAIAS has incorporated a two-day preview event into the show, AutoMobili-D – an exhibition and symposium centered around automotive and mobility tech, with the goal of fostering innovations across the automotive supply chain by connecting mobility tech firms with OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and venture capitalists.

The growing popularity of AutoMobili-D is a strong indication of a reviving automotive industry in North America. As the focus of automobiles shifts from hardware to software, creating new values through digitalization, electrification, and connectivity, AutoMobili-D has quickly expanded to include over a hundred exhibitors from different fields.

At this year’s event, U.S. President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to announce a newly approved federal funding for the first 35 states to build electric vehicle charging stations throughout their states, helping the nation achieve its short-term goal of 500,000 publicly accessible charge points. Biden expressed his optimism for a fully electrified American highway system, announcing that Detroit is making a comeback while hopping on an all-electric Corvette.

An EV-focused Detroit Auto Show

AUTOCRYPT Is Back

Guess who else is at AutoMobili-D this year? AUTOCRYPT’s Chief Communications Officer Jaeson Yoo and Global IR Director Yohan Lepoetre flew from Seoul to Detroit to present AUTOCRYPT at the exhibition, three months since AUTOCRYT’s last visit to the city during AutoTech: Detroit in June.

AUTOCRYPT was invited to AutoMobili-D by Plug and Play Detroit, after being selected as one of the 17 startups in Batch 3 of its startup accelerator program, among a wide pool of up to 1,000 startups sourced in the program. Exhibiting at the AutoMobili-D Startup Arena, AUTOCRYPT met hundreds of industry executives that came from a variety of backgrounds, including OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, transport ministries, and research institutions, speaking about the importance of cybersecurity for automobiles, electric vehicle charging stations, and connected roadside infrastructure. As expected, many visitors expressed interest in AUTOCRYPT’s V2X security solution.

“The biggest challenge in autonomous driving development today is that sensor and object recognition technologies have reached their bottleneck. Companies are struggling to bring fully autonomous vehicles forward and are continuously delaying their forecast for full autonomy,” said Yohan. “We believe real-time vehicle-infrastructure cooperation through V2X communications is the ultimate answer to the remaining problems in autonomous driving.”

AUTOCRYPT’s booth at AutoMobili-D Startup Arena

Besides V2X, electric vehicle charging is another hot topic at the event. Despite Biden’s optimism, many experts remained skeptical about the usability of public charging infrastructure. This is indeed a valid concern because the effectiveness of a public charging network is not only determined by the number of available chargers, but by whether charge point operators (CPOs) have the tools and capacity to manage and maintain these chargers over the long run – you don’t want to have 500,000 chargers if one-third of them don’t work.

Earlier this year, AUTOCRYPT introduced its Charging Station Management System (CSMS) to enable CPOs to easily monitor the real-time status and availability of every charger in their network, allowing for not only quick maintenance, but also a more seamless and secure charging experience for users.

To learn more about AUTOCRYPT’s V2X security and EV charging solutions, contact global@autocrypt.io.

To stay informed and updated on the latest news about AUTOCRYPT and mobility tech, subscribe to AUTOCRYPT’s quarterly newsletter.

16 August, 2022 . 5 mins read

Spotlight: Vehicle Hacking at DEF CON 30

In this blog, we’ll be highlighting our Security Validation Department, who made the trip to Los Angeles to present on Ethernet and Blackbox fuzzing and participate in the annual hacking festivities. Have an insider’s look at our team, led by Dr. Jonghyuk Song, and how this group of ethical hackers are striving to make connected and autonomous driving safer for us all.

Las Vegas is a long way from Yeouido. An island sitting on the Han River in Seoul, Korea, Yeouido is often referred to as the “Manhattan” of Seoul. It’s home to many a bank and investment firm, as well as the country’s National Assembly Hall. It is a far cry from the Las Vegas strip, but last week the two collided as seven members of AUTOCRYPT’s Security Validation Department, led by Dr. Jonghyuk Song, AUTOCRYPT’s Chief Security Research Officer and Head of Security Validation, spent their week at DEF CON 30.

The annual hacking and security conference hosts tens of thousands of visitors each year and the schedule is jam-packed with presentations and workshops. However, unlike other expos or events, DEF CON is unique in the sense that it is divided into “villages” that host a variety of events and contests dedicated to hacking and pushing the boundaries of what it means to be “secure” in the connected space. Some of the most well-known villages include Aerospace Village, Car Hacking Village, Biohacking, Physical Security and even Social Engineering Village.

While the idea of hundreds of hackers and hacktivists congregating in Vegas and the aforementioned villages may seem like a recipe for disaster, in reality it’s the opposite. Hacking events, especially like DEF CON, attract hackers who are passionate about these industries, and contests allow both hackers and industries associated with these villages to be able to see vulnerabilities within existing technology.

Visitors at DEF CON 30 can participate in a number of activities, including physical security engineering.

One of the members, Donghyeon Jeong, who attended DEF CON for the first time ever, remarked, “Unlike what the general public may believe, hacking isn’t something that’s done alone or without careful planning and logic. There’s lots of advanced equipment required, and some teams have up to 20 people working on different elements simultaneously. Your team has to work together to prioritize problems and solve the problems strategically, depending on the level of difficulty.” The AUTOCRYPT team placed fifth at this year’s Capture the Flag (CTF) contest in the car-hacking village, and tasks consisted of a wide range of problems like ECU hardware-related issues, virtual environment operations, Bluetooth hacking, and firmware reverse engineering.

AUTOCRYPT’s team at work in the Car Hacking Village CTF. AUTOCRYPT came in fifth at this year’s event.

Dr. Song, a many-time participant in the CTF competitions as well as presenter for advanced hacking methods, says that he believes that hacker conventions like DEF CON are crucial to the advancement of secure technology for autonomous driving. “Hacking is just like other technologies where advanced methods are always in development, and coming to these events allows us to see firsthand how to deal with new attacks and also share new strategies we’ve come across in our own work. More and more we see the crossover between hackers and the industries that they are trying to hack as companies are beginning to recognize that the best defense is actually a smart, strategic offense. In fact, you’ll see quite a few recruiters at these events looking to hire an in-house security expert or even just an ethical hacker to test their defense systems.”

And while the competitions are a large part of the event, there are a multitude of presentations that speak more directly to visitors and participants regarding hacking techniques. Dr. Song with AUTOCRYPT’s Soohwan Oh, Jeongho Yang, and Woongjo Choi, presented on automotive ethernet fuzzing as well as black box fuzzing of UDS CAN. Dr. Song stated that he believes that presenting on automotive hacking is especially important, as more and more connectivity is moving outside the traditional IT system. “The last thing you would want to happen is for someone to tamper with a connected vehicle on the move, which could ultimately affect human lives. Showcasing how we hack into systems allows manufacturers and suppliers to take a second look at their own security architecture before drivers and passengers get in the car.”

“It’s important to note that car hacking isn’t the end all be all. Just as we moved on from traditional IT to connected IoT, I think hacking will continue to evolve into other parts of the mobility ecosystem. EV chargers, Fleet Management Systems and mobility services – they will all continue to require white hats like us to monitor and test them, so that everyone can enjoy them without worrying about the vulnerabilities or risks involved,” said Donghyeon Jang.

Check back on our blog for more Spotlight pieces, as we continue to travel around the globe to new events and exhibitions exploring automotive tech and security. To subscribe to our newsletter, visit here.