Academician Wu Jiangxing: Smart car network security urgently needs to break the system

Since the beginning of this year, intelligent networked vehicles have shown an explosive state. In the process of networking and intelligent upgrading of the automobile industry, network security issues also follow. According to statistics from some organizations, from 2016 to 2020, the total number of annual security incidents in automotive cybersecurity incidents has increased by 605%. The security situation in the field of intelligent networked vehicles deserves high attention. It can be said that network security has become an intelligent networked vehicle. The “ceiling” of industrial development, and the further release of its potential, has been “knocked” by security issues to a large extent.

The core of network security is the endogenous security issue

Wu Jiangxing, director of the National Digital Switching System Engineering Technology Research Center and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that the core and common problems of intelligent networked vehicle safety are endogenous safety issues. The so-called endogenous security issues are inherent, innate, and common security issues that exist at the genetic level. An intelligent networked car is essentially a “computer on wheels”, a typical cyber-physical system, and its software scale exceeds 300 million lines of code. In such a large system, I don’t know if there are software and hardware vulnerabilities. Calculated based on the average of 15-20 vulnerabilities in the industry’s thousand lines of code, the vulnerabilities can be imagined. I don’t know if there is a “back door”. With the existing scientific and technological capabilities of mankind, it is impossible to exhaust the “back door” behavior of software and hardware in the open industrial environment; the boundary between traditional functional security and network security is not known because of random failures. The security problems that arise are still those caused by software and hardware design flaws, which are difficult to distinguish and assign responsibilities; how to quantify the security functions is not known, whether the software and hardware are 99% safe or 99.9% safe cannot be calibrated. In layman’s terms, we don’t know how much risk there are in the current intelligent networked vehicles? I don’t know if these risks are at the network level or can penetrate to the physical level? Don’t know how to measure safety? These basic issues constitute endogenous security issues.

Traditional security paradigm is difficult to solve endogenous security problems

In the field of cyber security, there are roughly three technical paradigms: The first paradigm is “the functional safety development paradigm based on redundant configuration and voting”, which focuses on solving the problem of physical or logical failure of network space terminals, nodes, and software and hardware of network systems; The second paradigm is a safe development paradigm based on encryption and authentication and authorization, and authorization management is used to protect legitimate users from using software and hardware facilities or information services or data resources safely; the third paradigm is a “network security development paradigm based on detection and analysis”, mainly The goal is to check and kill virus and Trojan horses, find and repair software and hardware vulnerabilities, and sense and block attack behavior characteristics.

Academician Wu Jiangxing told reporters that these three paradigms all face the same common technical problems. In the absence of prior knowledge, how to deal with unknown endogenous security threats in cyberspace based on unknown vulnerabilities, backdoors, viruses, and Trojan horses. That is to say, the foundation of security defense technology is prior knowledge. You must know the basic characteristics of “criminals” in order to form an effective defense plan based on the characteristics. If there is no effective sample, sufficient data, and no prior knowledge, a security defense system can be constructed. It’s just useless. For intelligent networked vehicles, the existing technology can neither explain the risks nor guarantee the network security. How can users rest assured that they can use them?

Change the traditional thinking mode with new technological paths

In the face of the traditional security paradigm that is difficult to deal with the increasingly frequent cyber security risks and problems, how to solve the common endogenous security issues? Academician Wu Jiangxing believes that fundamentally it is to promote paradigm innovation. A few days ago, at the “Cyberspace Common Security Technology Seminar” hosted by Fudan University, it was proposed that a new security paradigm should embody the “three news”, construct new universal theories, establish new practice norms, and open up new technological paths. Through scientific and technological innovation, we have stepped out of the traditional security model based on “killing viruses and eliminating horses”, “repairing the sheep” and “reinforcing the walls and clearing the wild”, and constructing the “fourth security paradigm” in cyberspace.

The fourth paradigm of network security breaks through the difficulties of the traditional security paradigm. It has the following four basic characteristics. First, it effectively suppresses known or unknown vulnerabilities, backdoors and viruses hidden in the system without relying on prior knowledge. The security threats caused by Trojan horses enable information systems or control devices to operate normally under conditions of “toxic bacteria”. The second is to solve the problem of functional safety and network security in an integrated manner, and use reliability technology to redefine and re-enable functional safety and network security to offset the theoretical “black hole” after the failure of random failure theory. The third is that the security functions of the network can be quantified, and the anti-attack and reliability indicators of the cyber-physical system can be calibrated and tested through mature technologies to provide mechanism guarantees for the safety and credibility of products. Fourth, it matches and adapts to the evolution and expansion of the network, and has strong scalability. It can either upgrade existing systems through incremental deployment, or empower future systems through redeployment.

At present, my country’s unique and original endogenous security technology in cyberspace is a typical representative of the “fourth paradigm”, and a series of landmark achievements and progress have been made in this field. my country has more than 20 types of equipment and systems represented by endogenous security switching chips and endogenous security software development environments, and has withstood multiple rounds of high-pressure “violent” tests by the world’s top “white hat hackers”, which have been verified in actual combat. The theory and technology are highly available and reliable.

Innovative achievements need to be promoted in common people’s homes

After a long period of hard work, Chinese researchers aiming at the “pain points” of intelligent networked vehicles have jointly conducted scientific research and conducted a large amount of basic research. They have taken the lead in proposing the integrated guarantee method for the functional safety and network security of intelligent networked vehicles. Automobile manufacturers have carried out the verification of the principle of endogenous safety and autonomous driving, formed the theoretical framework of the endogenous safety of intelligent networked vehicles, and obtained a number of expected results of basic principle verification. It is expected to explore a high reliability for solving the safety pain points of the intelligent networked vehicle industry. , High-reliability, high-availability new ways and new paths.

Realizing the safety paradigm and bringing innovative technologies into the homes of ordinary people require joint efforts. Academician Wu Jiangxing believes that efforts must be strengthened in at least three areas.

The first is to promote the collaborative innovation of smart car safety. Focusing on the urgent needs of the country and the needs of the industry, break through the institutional constraints that restrict the improvement of innovation capabilities, break the institutional barriers between institutions of higher learning, and between universities and other innovation entities, and form an effective linkage, integration of responsibilities, rights, and industry-university-research collaborations, and establish Encourage the development of “innovation zones” of various innovative entities, establish a “big scientific research” model that combines free exploration and intensive research, and build a “smart car network testing ground” for international cybersecurity elites to produce unique, original, and innovative products. The research results to solve the safety bottleneck problem of smart cars, break through the technical problems of “systems, Modules, chips” and other different levels, and build a benign ecology of education, technology, and industry integration.

The second is to promote the innovation of the safety test mode of intelligent networked vehicles. Introduce “white box security test” in the smart car security test, that is, preset a number of vulnerabilities in the control system software to test whether the network protection system can block the exploit path and whether the functional security system can ensure that extreme scenarios are controllable and guaranteed Network and functional safety. At present, traditional safety tests for passenger facilities such as automobiles all use destructive testing methods in reliability tests to test their safety performance under extreme conditions. This method should also be used for smart car network security testing, that is, “white box security testing”. Real money is not afraid of fire, and testing network security software and measures in real environments and scenarios is really defensive.

The third is to promote the rapid follow-up of the financial and insurance industry. This year, the “Data Security Law” and the “Personal Information Protection Law” have been promulgated one after another, and the network security insurance pilot program has been included in the three-year development plan for the first time, and network security insurance has become a hot spot. However, in the field of intelligent networked vehicles, the safety performance of software and hardware cannot be quantitatively designed and verified, and no one can answer whether the additional safety facilities themselves are safe. How can the insurance industry dare to provide insurance services for such a car whose safety cannot be measured? For insurance products to diversify risks for intelligent networked vehicles, technological innovation and paradigm innovation are required. At the same time, policy guarantees, talent replacement, and accelerated technology, industry, and business model innovation are needed to help the development of emerging industries.