A question of the right perspective

CYMOTIVE company logo in the entrance area.

Cybersecurity: Israeli specialists are supporting Volkswagen in the connected automobiles of the future.

Tel Aviv, Israel. Numerous skyscrapers tower skywards along the eastern edge of the centre of the country's largest metropolitan area. And more and more are appearing. Being built here is a new working hub of 'Silicon Wadi'. Recently, that has been the name given by the people in Israel to the collection of high-tech companies located between the two large cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In addition to familiar names of the technology and Internet industries that have founded research and development centres in Israel in past years, these primarily include numerous domestic start-up companies which generate a high level of dynamism in technological progress in the 'Wadi'. Housed in one of the new high-rise buildings since early this year is the company CYMOTIVE Technologies.

German-Israeli cybersecurity company
As early as September 2016, the automotive OEM Volkswagen founded a business for cybersecurity in the automotive industry – together with three leading Israeli experts and their teams. Ever since, the company has been developing advanced solutions in cybersecurity for the next generation of networked automobiles and mobile services under the leadership of Yuval Diskin, Tsafrir Kats and Tamir Bechor.

Ralf Milke (Volkswagen), Tsafrir Kats and Yuval Diskin (CYMOTIVE), Beate Hofer (Volkswagen) and Jürgen Klöpffer (Autovision) at the event marking the opening of the company's new business spaces.

A view of the CYMOTIVE suite.

Israeli security expertise for Volkswagen
Israel is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.
In proportion to its population, the country on the eastern border of the Mediterranean Sea has the largest number of start-up companies – and viewed in absolute numbers it ranks second, after the USA. Due to its precarious security situation, the country has a heightened need for highly advanced security technologies. Supplemental to their university studies, many experts acquire their knowledge during their mandatory service in the armed forces, which every young Israeli, male or female, must perform. The field of cybersecurity is a focus of both military and civilian research in Israel. Not only does this refer to the security of electronic data, but also to technical safeguarding of all systems that are connected to the Internet or could be connected to it.

This will also apply to the automobile of the future to an increasing degree. Above all, progress in automated driving will drive growth in the connectivity of vehicles. This will result in new interfaces to the transportation infrastructure via Car2X and to other vehicles via Car2Car. The connected car of the future is expected to interact autonomously with numerous data networks operated by other services and providers. The complex network of control units in the vehicle and communication with the cloud both increase the risk that unauthorised parties could gain access to the car or the infrastructure connected to it.

That is why CYMOTIVE, together with Volkswagen, will be further optimising the data security of vehicles and their control units.

Team meeting on the 32nd floor.

A view towards the Mediterranean Sea.

CYMOTIVE offered this rare glimpse of what goes on so intensively behind the scenes during the dedication of the new office spaces. The office spaces on the 32nd floor in one of the recently finished skyscrapers on Yigal Alon Street impress with a breathtaking view over Tel Aviv.

Detailed insights
In their everyday work, however, the focus is not on the panoramic view, but on the smallest details. Printed circuit boards of control units are studied under a microscope for analysis purposes. The PC-boards are disassembled into their individual parts, and each component is subjected to a security check.

The CYMOTIVE employee keeps looking through the lens of his microscope and checks on the progress of his efforts on the computer screen.

With a gentle touch, he rearranges the smallest hardware components – just a fraction of a millimetre in size – or combines them with other components. His goal is to reveal any security gaps in the hardware and in the data interfaces between the processors. Hackers might analyse which data is exchanged between the small chip sets and then attack this weak link.

Electronic components under the microscope.

Employee of the 'Red team'.

The 'Red team' ...
'Hacking' begins on the so-called 'Red Team' – the offensive department at Cymotive. That is because all of a potential attacker's steps mimic those of engineering development, but in reverse, so to speak.

Based on knowledge of a component's structure, the Red Team attempts to access other data. Now it is just a matter of the bits and bytes – the software. The specialists look for weaknesses and potentials for manipulation. Have the developers barred all the digital doors? The young employees are highly motivated. If they discover possibilities for manipulation, then they have won. The term 'gamification' is certainly apropos here.

... and the 'Blue team'
Behind the next glass wall, the process continues with the so-called 'Blue Team' – the defensive department of Cymotive. When attackers find an open digital door in the system, the defender's task is to work out a technical opportunity to close this door. The objective is to have the findings flow back into a component's development. This sustainably fills a potential security gap.

But this is not all, the Blue Team also serves as the R&D centre for security solutions for the connected car and its eco system. The team works together with Volkswagen’s development teams to embed state-of-the-art security solutions into the carmaker’s future platforms.

The goal of these two processes is to have concurrent development and continuous improvement in order to achieve an increasingly higher level of security.
Positioned as it is, CYMOTIVE is another important part of the development process, and it represents a genuine advancement in the security of the future 'smartphone on wheels'.

Ralf Milke, Head of the Electrics and Electronics Development, Body Electronics and Vehicle Electrical Systems Department at Volkswagen, emphasises this: "Data security is really the trust our customers place in the vehicle. With growing connectivity, today's technical approaches are no longer adequate for the digital vehicle. Extending our own know-how and collaborating more intensively with international experts therefore represent an important step in satisfying the expectations of our customers."

His colleague, Beate Hofer, Head of Information Security at the Volkswagen Group adds this: "Cybersecurity is more than just technical safeguarding of the infrastructure and systems. It also involves IT security processes, information security risk management, classification of information and more. However, to address the issue of cybersecurity effectively, we also need a new perspective – and indeed that of a hacker."