Towards Understanding and Characterizing Vulnerabilities in Intelligent Connected Vehicles through Real-World Exploits

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00627v1
• Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2026 09:56:44 GMT
• Title: Towards Understanding and Characterizing Vulnerabilities in Intelligent Connected Vehicles through Real-World Exploits
• Authors: Yuelin Wang, Yuqiao Ning, Yanbang Sun, Xiaofei Xie, Zhihua Xie, Yang Chen, Zhen Guo, Shihao Xue, Junjie Wang, Sen Chen,
• Abstract summary: There is a lack of systematic understanding of ICV vulnerabilities.<n>Much of the current literature relies on human subjective analysis.<n>This study provides a comprehensive and data-driven analysis of ICV vulnerabilities.
• Score: 27.76654189708101
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) are a core component of modern transportation systems, and their security is crucial as it directly relates to user safety. Despite prior research, most existing studies focus only on specific sub-components of ICVs due to their inherent complexity. As a result, there is a lack of systematic understanding of ICV vulnerabilities. Moreover, much of the current literature relies on human subjective analysis, such as surveys and interviews, which tends to be high-level and unvalidated, leaving a significant gap between theoretical findings and real-world attacks. To address this issue, we conducted the first large-scale empirical study on ICV vulnerabilities. We began by analyzing existing ICV security literature and summarizing the prevailing taxonomies in terms of vulnerability locations and types. To evaluate their real-world relevance, we collected a total of 649 exploitable vulnerabilities, including 592 from eight ICV vulnerability discovery competitions, Anonymous Cup, between January 2023 and April 2024, covering 48 different vehicles. The remaining 57 vulnerabilities were submitted daily by researchers. Based on this dataset, we assessed the coverage of existing taxonomies and identified several gaps, discovering one new vulnerability location and 13 new vulnerability types. We further categorized these vulnerabilities into 6 threat types (e.g., privacy data breach) and 4 risk levels (ranging from low to critical) and analyzed participants' skills and the types of ICVs involved in the competitions. This study provides a comprehensive and data-driven analysis of ICV vulnerabilities, offering actionable insights for researchers, industry practitioners, and policymakers. To support future research, we have made our vulnerability dataset publicly available.

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