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Why Car Info Tech Is So Thoroughly At Risk
Cory Doctorow reflects in a post at Boing Boing on the many ways in which modern cars' security infrastructure is a white-hot mess. And as to the reasons why, this seems to be the heart of the matter, and it applies to much more than cars: [M]anufacturers often view bugs that aren't publicly understood as unimportant, because it costs something to patch those bugs, and nothing to ignore them, even if those bugs are exploited by bad guys, because the bad guys are going to do everything they can to keep the exploit secret so they can milk it for as long as possible, meaning that even if your car is crashed (or bank account is drained) by someone exploiting a bug that the manufacturer has been informed about, you may never know about it. There is a sociopathic economic rationality to silencing researchers who come forward with bugs.
I think maybe you misread the article, or misunderstood it. (The _real_ Ars Technica article, not the useless boingboing summary.)
Normally there are two _separate_ CAN busses, one which handles all the critical crap, and one which handles the infotainment and comfort stuff. There's a module which connects the two, providing read-only queries from the second to the first. None of the hacks breached this system.
There's a physical, pluggable interface to the safety-critical CAN. Some people have "hacked" it. I don't see how this is a real problem. Somebody with physical access hacks into your computer's car. Shocker. News at 11. That should be the least of your worries. And, frankly, if you lock that down using something like DRM, you're only going to harm the good guys. The bad guys will always have access to the vendor keys necessary to tap into that bus, because they don't follow the rules.
Some manufacturers have idiotically used the ODBC-II interface to cheaply add a cellular network module to the safety-critical CAN bus, instead of adding the necessary functionality to the existing CAN bridge. Probably because the existing CAN bridge is _properly_ secured and adding features too burdensome. Slapping a radio module on the first CAN bus was expedient and cheaper, and thoroughly _stupid_.
NHTSA publishes a list of civil settlements here:
http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Re...
Fiat Chrysler was recently fined for inadequate protections on Jeep gas tanks, but I did not see that on the page linked above - so the list isn't entirely current.
NHTSA may not be the fastest regulatory group out there, but they have shown a willingness to go after car companies that do not issue timely fixes for dangerous problems. Automotive software bugs will eventually kill people. Unfortunately, NHTSA probably won't care until then.