Emerging Security Risks in Automotive System-on-Chips (SoCs): A Comprehensive Review
Keywords:
Automotive cybersecurity, System-on-Chip (SoC), hardware security, connected vehicles, ADAS, secure automotive electronicsAbstract
The transformation of modern vehicles into highly connected and software-driven systems has positioned System-on-Chips (SoCs) as a central element of automotive innovation. Automotive SoCs combine heterogeneous processing cores, accelerators, memory subsystems, and communication interfaces to support safety-critical functionalities such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), autonomous driving, infotainment, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. While this high level of integration improves performance and cost efficiency, it also gives rise to new and increasingly complex security challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review of emerging security risks affecting automotive SoCs, encompassing hardware-based attacks, software and firmware vulnerabilities, network-oriented exploits, and systemic risks associated with over-the-air updates and AI-driven workloads. By synthesizing recent academic and industrial research, the paper identifies dominant attack vectors, shortcomings of existing protection mechanisms, and open challenges that remain unresolved. The goal is to provide both researchers and practitioners with a structured perspective on the evolving threat landscape and to outline directions for security-aware SoC design.
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