An electronic control unit comprises circuitry to receive a combined signal via a vehicle bus of a vehicle, wherein the combined signal contains a combination of a data signal and a watermark signal, which can be a radio frequency (RF) signal or an analog baseband signal, wherein the data signal includes a message, circuitry to extract a watermark from the watermark signal, circuitry to verify the watermark based on a comparison of the watermark with a pre-defined watermark, circuitry to extract the data signal from the combined signal and obtain the message from the data signal, and circuitry to authenticate the message based on the verification of the watermark.