MASc Seminar: Considering Safety and Security in AV Functions

Monday, July 29, 2019 11:00 am - 11:00 am EDT (GMT -04:00)

Candidate: Shefali Sharma

Title: Considering Safety and Security in AV Functions

Date: July 29, 2019

Time: 11:00AM

Place: EIT 3145

Supervisor(s): Fischmeister, Sebastian

Abstract:

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are coming to our streets. Due to the presence of highly complex software systems in AVs, there is a need for a new hazard analysis technique to meet stringent safety standards. Also, safety and security are inter-dependent and inter-related aspects of autonomous vehicles. They are focused at protecting the vehicles from accidental failures (safety

concern) and intentional attacks (security issue), which could lead to loss of lives and injuries to the occupants. So, the current research work has two key components: functional safety and cybersecurity of the autonomous systems. For the safety analysis, we have applied System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA), based on Systems Theoretic Accident Modeling and Processes (STAMP), which is a powerful tool that can identify, de fine, analyze and mitigate hazards from the earliest conceptual stage of development to the operation of a system. Applying STPA to autonomous vehicles demonstrates STPA's applicability to preliminary hazard analysis, alternative available, developmental tests, organizational design, and functional design of each unique safety operation.

This thesis describes the STPA process used to generate system design requirements for an Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) system using a top-down analysis approach to system safety. The research makes the following contributions to practicing STPA for safety and security: It describes the incorporation of safety and security analysis in one process and discusses the benefit s of this;  It provides an improved, structural approach for scenario analysis,concentrating on safety and security; It demonstrates the utility of STPA for gap analysis of existing designs in the automotive domain;  It provides lessons learned throughout the process of applying STPA and STPA-Sec.

Controlling a physical process is associated with dependability requirements in a cyber-physical system (CPS). Cyberattacks can lead to the dependability requirements not being in the acceptable range. Thus, monitoring of the cyber-physical system become inevitable for the detection of the deviations in the system from normal operation. One of the main issue is understanding the reason behind these deviations in a trustworthy manner. Understanding the reason for the deviation is crucial in the implementation of correct and timely control decisions, in order to mitigate cyberattacks and other causes of reduced dependability. This work presents evidential networks as a solution to this problem. In the current work, we are presenting a cyber-physical system analysis where the evidential networks is used for the detection of attacks. The results obtained from the STPA analysis, which provides the technical safety requirements, can be combined with the EN analysis, which can be used efficiently to detect the quality of the used sensor to justify whether the CPS is suitable for the safe and secure design.