The modern automobile consists of several Electronic Control Units (ECUs) to
support various safety-critical functionalities. The underlying systems are
susceptible to safety and cybersecurity attacks as the involved ECUs are
interconnected. The security attacks can lead to disrupting the safe operation
of the vehicle while causing injury to the passengers. Traditionally, the safety
team performs hazard analysis and risk assessment (HARA), while the security
team performs threat analysis and risk assessment (TARA) in evaluating the risk
associated with security incidents. The safety risk, calculated through HARA,
does not consider the impact of security incidents on it. Similarly, the
security risk calculated in TARA does not consider all the aspects of functional
safety associated with the involved assets. Thus, the aim of this article is to
merge the impact of safety hazards and security attacks through a uniform
framework, THARA. Consequently, the functional safety requirements and
cybersecurity requirements can be aligned with each other. In this article, a
case study of the application of the THARA framework is presented through the
risk analysis of safety and security threats applicable to the rearview camera
(RVC) feature of the vehicle.
