Auto Industry Teams Up With Military To Stop Car Hacking

An anonymous reader writes: A team of hackers is collaborating with military and industry groups to develop cyber security defenses for commercially available cars, in response to a growing threat from criminals and terrorists. In the U.K., hackers are now responsible for a third of car thefts in London and there are fears that while technology is progressing, older models will remain vulnerable to attack. Although there have been no reported instances of a car being completely commandeered outside of controlled conditions, during tests hackers come out on top every time – unlocking car boots, setting off windscreen wipers, locking brakes, and cutting the engine.

Comments

First rule of computer security!!!

[Karmashock]

1. Physical security.

If you let the machine get into the hands of hackers... they will break it the controls. And that is doubly certain if the device is mostly functional regardless. It will interact and that will let people either exploit flaws in the security or just decrypt it.

If you want to stop hackers from getting into the system then the first thing you have to do is make it pretty much impossible for a hacker to physically access the system. As in steel. And beyond that, the wireless connections are a serious vulnerability. Scale them back or secure systems from the wireless radios.

If you can't do that, then at the very least don't let a hacker turn my engine off while I'm driving down the free way. Some features are simply not worth that vulnerability.