Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Researcher Hacks Self-Driving Car Sensors

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-the-wheel dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Jonathan Petit, security researcher at Security Innovation, has created an electronics kit that costs only $60, which can flood LiDAR sensors on self-driving cars with a laser beam that contains fake data, making them think they have objects in front of them. This forces the self-driving car to slow down and sometimes abruptly stop. Affected cars include all manufacturers that deploy LiDAR sensors. As of now, Google and Apple are affected. According to this article, so may be Toyota's upcoming car.

6 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Thats the usual problem with any radar system. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nearly all of them (from sonar, radar, lidar...) all are susceptible to various interference techniques.

    The only ones that exist that I'm sure are NOT directly affected are used by whales, dolphins, bats... They can be overpowered causing problems... but at the operational strength none seem affected even though they are using the same frequencies.

    Even normal drivers are affected by having lights shined into their eyes... (which happens to be why it is illegal to aim laser pointers at aircraft or cars).

    1. Re: Thats the usual problem with any radar system. by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Remember that you're dealing with something moving at the speed of light here, combined with short distances, so the delays are so minute that you need exotic techniques like optical heterodyne detection at the receiver to measure nanosecond-level differences. In fact I'm surprised the replay attack worked at all, I'm guessing the receivers were incredibly permissive in how they treat incoming signals, given that you'd (theoretically) need nanosecond-level synchronisation for it to work.

    2. Re: Thats the usual problem with any radar system. by Capt.Albatross · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > I'm guessing the receivers were incredibly permissive in how they treat incoming signals.

      I would not be at all surprised, as this technology is, or was until recently, in development.

      First making it work and then hardening it is not a bad strategy, as long as you actually do the latter - and it is a good idea to think about how you would do it before you need to.

  2. Re:Yet another attack vector by Derekloffin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Indeed. While this might be interesting in the future, as is it is kinda a 'so what' kind of thing. Human drivers are even more easy to disorient and in generally far more seriously, and the car is just slowing down or coming to a halt, something you can also accomplish with putting a cheap obstacle in its path. Now, if they can get it to speed up or ignore obstacles then that would be concerning.

  3. Vehicles interfering with each other? by wvmarle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So LiDAR sends out a laser beam, then looks at reflections. It makes sense this can be flooded - just pick up the signal and send it back amplified, and it seems there's something really close. I assume at least they're looking for brightness rather than timing (distance travelled is very short and light is very fast) to determine the distance of an object.

    This makes me wonder. Would it be possible for cars to pick up signals from other cars, and react to them?

    Anything to prevent this from happening - and so also prevent such a disturbance attack from working?

  4. Re:Throwing a puppy in front of the car by michelcolman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, but you will be seen doing it. With this hack, you just need to be somewhere within eyesight, for example on the second floor of some building the car's driving by. You can stop any car you see if you can just target its lidar from a distance. You don't have to be in front of it to make it think there's something there.