RemotiveLabs has integrated security on-board communication (SecOC) into RemotiveBroker, its automotive electronic control unit (ECU) virtualisation platform, adding automatic message authentication across vehicle communication protocols without manual configuration. The integration targets a growing vulnerability in software-defined vehicle (SDV) architectures, where expanded ECU networks increase the attack surface for in-vehicle communication.

When reading a signal database, RemotiveBroker, RemotiveTopology’s default ECU virtualisation layer, automatically detects SecOC configurations. Additional SecOC configuration for frames can be provided using a meta database format alongside a signal database

SecOC is a standard within the automotive open system architecture (AUTOSAR) framework that protects inter-ECU messages from replay attacks and tampering by verifying both message origin and freshness. RemotiveBroker automatically extracts the relevant SecOC parameters from ARXML, LDF, DBC and Fibex signal database formats, embedding them directly in the configuration without a separate manual step.

The integration operates across in-vehicle environments, developer workstations and cloud-based continuous integration pipelines, covering the development cycle from early simulation to production testing. Developers can also produce deliberately non-compliant SecOC messages by altering freshness values or sending raw binary frames, to verify how systems handle invalid inputs.

SecOC parameters, including authentication key and freshness value, are assigned per ECU within RemotiveBroker’s simulation configuration and extracted automatically from the signal database

SecOC support is a standard component in RemotiveTopology, RemotiveLabs’ broader vehicle platform virtualisation framework, which uses RemotiveBroker as its default ECU instantiation layer. As vehicle electrical and electronic architectures grow more complex, automated security configuration reduces a key bottleneck in testing interconnected ECU networks.

Why this matters:

• Security testing moving into virtual development environments is a quiet but meaningful shift.The ability to validate SecOC-protected ECU communication before hardware exists—on a laptop or in a CI pipeline—compresses the point at which cybersecurity is integrated into SDV development, reducing the risk of security gaps being discovered late in a programme when they are expensive to fix.