Quantum Light Ltd

Automotive Cybersecurity and Physical Security

In an era where connected cars are becoming increasingly prevalent, the need for robust cybersecurity measures is more critical than ever; as well as there is an evident need for protection from many different RF wireless hacks that have been successful in hacking user credentials and actually stealing all types of connected cars.

Among various innovative solutions, our “LightKey” broadcasting security technology emerges as a cornerstone in the realm of vehicular cybersecurity. This blog article reviews some aspects of our LightKey for automotive technology, in terms of the LightKey value proposition and its pivotal role in safeguarding connected cars against cyber security attacks and against and physical car theft threats.

The Rise of Connected Cars and Associated Cyber Risks

The automotive industry has witnessed a significant shift towards connected vehicles, integrating advanced AI and networked micro-controllers. While these technological advancements offer enhanced functionality and user experience, they also introduce substantial cybersecurity risks. The Controller Area Network (CAN) of these vehicles, crucial for internal communication, typically lacks encryption, making it vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The dire need for secure and authenticated wireless communication systems in connected cars has never been more apparent.

Understanding Light Broadcasting Security Technology

LightKey broadcasting security technology utilizes light signals to authenticate the user of a connected car. This method involves transmitting a unique sequence of light signals that the vehicle owner or authorized user must recognize and respond to correctly. This interaction is facilitated through our mobile LightKey app and/or through our remote user authentication procedures. The uniqueness of the light sequence produced by our LightKey App and devices, make it a robust authentication tool that is hard to replicate or interfere with by unauthorized entities.

Advantages of Light Broadcasting in Vehicle Security

Enhanced Authentication: The light broadcasting system provides a secure and reliable method for authenticating legitimate users, thereby preventing unauthorized access to the vehicle.

Backward Compatibility: This technology can be seamlessly integrated into older vehicle models, making it an ideal solution for retrofitting cybersecurity measures in a vast range of cars.

Low Risk of Interference: Unlike radio frequency-based systems, light signals are less prone to interception or jamming, offering a more secure communication channel.

User-Friendly Interface: With intuitive interaction mechanisms, light broadcasting systems can be designed for ease of use, ensuring that legitimate users are not inconvenienced.

Integrating Light Broadcasting with CAN Systems

To fully harness the potential of light broadcasting technology, LightKey is integrated with the vehicle’s CAN system in a fail-safe and tamper-proof manner. In the event of unauthorized access attempts, the system can issue commands to immobilize the vehicle. This integration not only adds an extra layer of security but also ensures immediate action in case of a breach, safeguarding both the vehicle and its occupants.

Addressing Challenges in Implementation

Implementing light broadcasting security technology involves overcoming several challenges:

Compatibility Across Different Models: The system must be adaptable to various vehicle architectures, ensuring broad applicability.

Ensuring Reliability: The technology must consistently perform under different environmental conditions, maintaining its effectiveness regardless of lighting or weather conditions.

Balancing Security and Convenience: While maximizing security, the system should not overly complicate the user experience or cause undue inconvenience.

The Role of Light Broadcasting in Legal and Insurance Frameworks

Considering legal frameworks like the UK’s 2018 Automated and Electrical Vehicle Bill, which emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity in connected cars, light broadcasting technology can play a significant role. By providing a secure method of user authentication and firmware updates, it aligns with potential legal requirements, thereby mitigating insurance risks associated with cyber vulnerabilities.

Future Prospects and Industry Impact

The adoption of light broadcasting security technology in connected cars could have far-reaching implications for the automotive industry. It sets a precedent for innovative cybersecurity solutions and may inspire the development of standardized security protocols across various manufacturers.

Light broadcasting security technology stands as a pioneering solution in the quest to bolster cybersecurity in connected cars. Its ability to provide secure user authentication, coupled with its integration with the vehicle’s CAN system, marks a significant stride in protecting vehicles from cyber threats. As the automotive industry continues to evolve, embracing such innovative technologies will be crucial in ensuring the security and safety of connected vehicles. Light broadcasting security technology not only addresses current cybersecurity challenges but also paves the way for a safer and more secure automotive future.

Optical Security by the Laws of Physics

The computer and telecommunications industries are today in a dynamic state of convergence with the auto and cybersecurity industries. Such convergence is creating a unique large-scale opportunity for development of a new generation of vehicle computation retro-fit devices that are capable of delivering powerful tamper-proof cybersecurity solutions. Something which is sorely needed and, in order to empower users with an unexpected and truly revolutionary new level of processing power and vehicle security at the edge. In particular, we believe that these industries are yet to create and implement more reliable and more secure wireless technologies. A new approach to existing connected and autonomous vehicle security problems is painfully required, worldwide. A solution that is capable of accelerating the advent of a new generation of “secure connected vehicles.”

We believe there is a clear market opportunity for delivery of much more powerful edge-computing retro-fit hardware into existing and new vehicles. We believe that we must visualize the future by looking through the lens of innovation.

At Quantum Light Ltd, we can see a very clear strategic need to quickly and inexpensively deliver into these markets our new generation of hardware and software retro-fit technologies, secured by our own optical innovation! Millions of insecure connected cars are on the road today, which urgently require a new cybersecurity and edge-computing solution. A new tamper-proof vehicular security solution that may soon help accelerate large-scale deployment of end-to-end, secure and most importantly, regulatory compliant, wireless networks of connected and autonomous vehicles. In the U.K. we have a wide-spread and unsolved connected-vehicle problem. A key and painful problem, which shockingly impacts the owners of most if not all “smart connected vehicles.” There are literally millions of connected and autonomous vehicles, which are currently suffering from poor hardware security.

A serious problem, significantly impacting connected car markets and limiting their potential. Consider the fact there are over 10 million connected vehicles on British roads, which are unable to comply with the 2018 Automated and Electric Vehicle Law, for many reasons! We believe there is clear and very large market demand for securing connected vehicles. We have in our hands an opportunity to help solve a mission-critical obstacle in the path to deployment of automated and connected vehicles.

Edge computing for cars is powerful but not enough. Secure communications require more edge-computation power. Connected and AI self-driving cars require much higher mission-critical levels of communications’ cybersecurity. Connected and self-driving vehicles are vulnerable and we have to address these flaws as soon as possible.

The “Internet-of-things” along with the advent of car electronic control units or microprocessors for “wireless connected cars” may perhaps be compared to a similar “convergence point” in the computer industry during the 1970 to 1979 period. I can see an applicable system topology metaphor: personal computers versus the Mainframe terminals? The answer was of course that users demand more computation power in their hands. I think we can extrapolate the same paradigm and realise that there is a need for more computation power in the car, at the edge. We need more local power.

In terms of Cybersecurity, it’s necessary to speed up development of the connected car’s Cybersecurity architecture. At the moment, most cars rely on typical centralized Server network topologies, exposing unencrypted internet traffic to and from cars.

We are faced with Cybersecurity problems in connected cars, despite the obvious powerful computer smarts of modern connected AI self-driving cars and even considering the remarkable computation power derived from over 100 individually networked micro-controllers or mini-computers on-a-chip, all part of the car’s brains. We may also find in “connected AI self-driving” automobiles, an estimated 100 million lines of car computer code are running at once.

Alas! despite of all these marvelous microcontrollers, not much power “at the AI car edge” is dedicated to wireless communications. Cybersecurity cannot be achieved at the edge by software alone, since the entire “Controller Area Network” of each car is unprotected. There is no encryption of data flowing in the CAN network of cars, which is the internal hardware network that connects all components in modern cars.

The UK 2018 Automated and Electrical Vehicle Bill may one day require owners to install a specialized connected car Cybersecurity device, or else incur serious Insurance risk in cases of accidents for cars that operate with any level of self-driving AI software. An insurance liabiilty risk exists in the UK when, after an accident it is determined there were no secure firmware updates for the car’s operating AI software. It is hard to believe, but currently most if not all connected cars… cannot comply with this UK Law and physically due to the nature of their on-board electronics, cannot update AI firmware using secure and authenticated wireless transmissions.

Therefore, despite the technological marvels offered by connected cars today (like driving a collection of small computers on wheels) we are still not safe in terms of Cybersecurity since each one element of this automotive “Controller Area Network” does not have encryption and no way to update AI firmware wirelessly under secure authentication. There are no software “patches” possible to a hardware problem.

The automotive industry has NO shared security standards for different automotive vendors of electronic parts. Since each new part has no built-in credible Cybersecurity… once connected to the Internet, cars could become a hacking target. (2)

Hacking attacks on a “Connected Car” pose a significant risk due to the fact the car’s “Controller Area Network” manages in-car messages from different mission critical car systems, which many times may be life-critical to the driver and to the safety of other cars in proximity to the vehicle. The most vulnerable “attack vectors” are of course the user credentials & smartphone devices, which are also prone to hacking security keys and it’s best not to mention other attack vectors that pose significant “fleet” risk.

As the car industry moves faster to develop better self-driving artificial intelligence vehicles, it becomes ever more critical to invent new solutions that offer robust network security from hacking intruders. This problem presents a significant risk for users and also for car manufacturers, as well as for the Insurance industry, since the costs of insurance coverage reflect implicit security risks in today’s digital economy.

In the future, we venture to forecast that it will not be possible to legally operate self-driving cars on UK motorways without a hardened on-board computational and secure wireless communications system for certification of the roadworthiness and reliability of such autonomous vehicles. Encrypted, secure and authenticated wireless frequent updates of critical self-driving firmware software, requires the installation of a retrofit tamper proof, new genertion “firewall” security communications device: AEBIS.

Our need for incorporating an entire new level of effective Cybersecurity to vehicle manufacturing is becoming increasingly demanding; in order to resolve the issues of safety and system integrity for more than 10 million connected cars on UK motorways alone. We respectfully and humbly posit, Connected Car Cybersecurity is a strategic imperative for the future of AI autonomous and connected vehicles to the Internet.

Floren Cabrera F. de Teresa, CEO

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/how-the-convergence-of-automotive-and-tech-will-create-a-new-ecosystem

https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-forgotten-world-of-dumb-terminals

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/06/hackers-out-to-steal-a-tesla-can-create-their-very-own-personal-key/

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by Lawrence Klaes, Science Editor

We are at the threshold of a real revolution in computer technology, one that will literally change how our society currently functions and interacts with the machines and systems we operate now in ways we can only imagine.

This technology is quantum computing and its key aspects, namely security. This computing system is so named for it operates on the very foundations and principles of quantum physics. Utilizing the seemingly magical properties of the quantum state in our macroscopic world, quantum computing offers the ability to store data in quantities that may seem as unbelievable to us as a modern laptop holding terabytes of information would to someone at the start of the Computer Age in the mid-Twentieth Century.

Protecting the New Gold Standard: Information

In the often prescient 1992 film Sneakers, the character of Cosmo explains what has become the true ultimate commodity of the modern technological era:

“The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy or money. It’s run by ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons.

“There’s a war out there, old friend, a world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information …what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It’s all about the information.”

Our civilization runs on information of all sorts every second of every day. Most of this information is now stored, analyzed, filtered, and run through our elaborate systems of computers and the networks that deliver and collect them.

While much of the information our society needs to function is widely available, there is also a plethora of data that requires being protected for reasons ranging from personal privacy to national security. While current computers have a wide range of methods to secure the information placed on them, it is not always enough. Someone always seems ready and able to find a way to break through even the most sophisticated security cyphers and codes.

Quantum computers can change all this. Using the rules of quantum physics, more information could be stored on such a system than would ever be possible on a machine in the macrorealm. These same physics can also provide encryption protection that would make it virtually impossible to decode or otherwise break both stored data and its transmission from one computer system to another.

This medium is new and pioneering. There are many obstacles to overcome. Nevertheless, quantum computing and cryptography are real and offer possibilities that could transform our world and our species in ways we now only think of as science fiction. Quantum Light is leading the way in this incredible tomorrow. Learn how here