VehicleSec '26 Technical Sessions

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Monday, August 10

8:00 am–9:00 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am–9:15 am

Opening Remarks and Best Paper Awards

General Chairs: Hyungsub Kim, Indiana University, and Aiping Xiong, The Pennsylvania State University

9:15 am–10:00 am

Keynote Presentation

The Trajectory of Automotive Cybersecurity and the Role of AI

André Weimerskirch, Block Harbor Cybersecurity

Automotive cybersecurity has evolved through distinct phases, moving from limited industry awareness and a period of hype to today's regulated landscape. Despite substantial technological changes in vehicle architectures and connectivity over the last decade, confirmed security incidents remain largely constrained to vehicle theft and chip tuning. As the industry matures, investment patterns are shifting toward value-based decision making to meet regulatory compliance targets. The emergence of AI introduces a critical shift. On the threat side, AI may lower the technical and economic threshold for attacks, expanding the pool of capable adversaries and targeting previously unattractive systems. Conversely, AI offers immense potential for defense: it can accelerate vulnerability reduction, enable faster attack detection at scale, and automate security tasks to help stakeholders meet compliance goals. Crucially, the introduction of AI also creates new operational challenges, such as the need to automatically update vehicle firewalls within minutes and compress software update deployment timelines from months to hours. This talk provides a structured analysis of the field's historical trajectory, its current posture, and the specific security gaps that AI can and cannot close.

Dr. André Weimerskirch is COO of Block Harbor Cybersecurity. Before that, André was Vice President for Product Integrity and Technology at Lear Corporation where he was responsible for product security, functional safety, platform software, and validation labs. André also established the transportation cybersecurity group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) and still holds an Adjunct Associate Research Scientist appointment. André co-founded the embedded systems security company ESCRYPT in 2004 which was sold to Bosch in 2012.

André is active in all areas of transportation and AI robots cybersecurity and privacy. He is co-founder of the American workshop on embedded security in cars (escar USA), co-chairs the CCAT cybersecurity working group at the University of Michigan and is an advisor to the University of Michigan Dearborn Computer and Information Science Department.

10:00 am–10:30 am

Coffee and Tea Break

10:30 am–11:25 am

Drone Security

11:25 am–12:00 pm

12:00 pm–1:30 pm

Symposium Luncheon

1:30 pm–2:30 pm

PO Panel

Moderator: TBA
Panelists: Dr. Selcuk Uluagac and Daniel F. Massey, National Science Foundation

2:30 pm–3:00 pm

Coffee and Tea Break

3:00 pm–4:10 pm

Vehicle Network Security

4:10 pm–4:25 pm

Short Break

4:25 pm–5:30 pm

Infrastructure Security

6:00 pm–7:30 pm

VehicleSec '26 Demo/Poster Session and Happy Hour

Tuesday, August 11

8:00 am–9:00 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am–9:10 am

Opening Remarks and Demo Awards

General Chairs: Hyungsub Kim, Indiana University, and Aiping Xiong, The Pennsylvania State University

9:10 am–10:00 am

Keynote Presentation

Research Only? Understanding the Scope of Automotive Cyberattacks in the Wild

Stefan Savage, University of California, San Diego

Over the last fifteen years a steady stream of research results have identified significant cybersecurity issues in a range of automotive systems. This has included multiple remote takeover demonstrations on stock passenger vehicles - with adversarial control of drivetrain, brakes and steering systems among others. However, in spite of these results, there is little evidence of similar attacks "in the wild". In this talk, I'll explore why this discrepancy likely exists. In particular, we'll examine what makes cyberattacks attractive in some domains and not in others, and how this doctrine manifests in the automotive context in particular. We'll highlight the role that real-world adversarial "hacking" plays in the current automotive ecosystem and discuss what kinds of scenarios might change today's status quo.

Stefan Savage is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he holds the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Chair in Information and Computer Science.

Savage earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in Applied History from Carnegie Mellon University.

His research interests lie at the intersection of distributed systems, networking, and computer security, with a current focus on embedded security and the economics of cybercrime.

Throughout his career, Savage has received numerous accolades, including:

  • ACM Prize in Computing (2015): Recognized for innovative research in network security, privacy, and reliability.
  • MacArthur Fellowship (2017): Awarded for identifying and addressing the technological, economic, and social vulnerabilities underlying internet security challenges and cybercrime.
  • Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2021): Honored for his contributions to the field of computer science.
  • Election to the National Academy of Engineering (2022): Recognized for contributions to the security, privacy, and reliability of network systems, transforming approaches to problems in these areas.

At UC San Diego, Savage serves as the Director of UC San Diego’s Center for Networked Systems (CNS) and as Co-director of the Center for Evidence-based Security Research (CESR), a collaborative initiative between UC San Diego and the International Computer Science Institute.

10:00 am–10:30 am

Coffee and Tea Break

10:30 am–10:50 am

Lightning Talks

  • When Collaboration Betrays: The Evolving Attack Surface of Collaborative Perception
    Qingzhao Zhang, University of Arizona
  • The Law Bites Before the Code Does: Designing Vehicle Predictive-Maintenance Systems for U.S. and EU Regulatory Reality
    Joseph Squillace, The Pennsylvania State University
  • Toward Physical-Layer Fingerprinting of Production Automotive ECUs via CAN Bus Signals
    Abbas Ali and Hafiz Malik, University of Michigan-Dearborn

10:50 am–12:00 pm

Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment

12:00 pm–1:30 pm

Symposium Luncheon

1:30 pm–2:15 pm

Sensor Security

2:15 pm–3:00 pm

3:00 pm–3:30 pm

Coffee and Tea Break

3:30 pm–4:05 pm

Vehicle Attacks and Defenses 2

4:05 pm–4:55 pm

ESCAR Talks

  • Patchlings: Enabling A/B-Equivalent OTA Updates for Deeply Embedded Automotive ECUs
    Sekar Kulandaivel, Bosch
  • Constructive Assurance Cases for Cybersecurity
    Brian Murray, STEER Tech
  • CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE, LOW SECURITY – A Familiar Tale of Cybersecurity Woes
    Maggie Shipman, Southwest Research Institute

4:55 pm–5:00 pm

Closing Remarks

General Chairs: Hyungsub Kim, Indiana University, and Aiping Xiong, The Pennsylvania State University