Virginia State Police Cars Hacked

ancientribe writes: Two models of Virginia State Police cruisers were hacked in an experiment to expose vulnerabilities in the vehicles and to come up with ways to protect the cars from hackers. Mitre Corp., the Virginia Dept. of Motor Vehicles, the University of Virginia, and other organizations in cooperation with DHS and the DOT demonstrated the attacks on an unmarked 2012 Chevrolet Impala and a marked patrol car, a 2013 Ford Taurus. GM and Ford even provided their comments to the press in the wake of the experiment.

Comments

Literally nothing new

[ArylAkamov]

"The hacks of the VSP cruisers require initial physical tampering of the vehicle as well. The researchers inserted rogue devices in the two police vehicles to basically reprogram some of the car's electronic operations, or to wage the attacks via mobile devices, which they demonstrated."

Give physical access to a computer system and it can be compromised?

What a shock.

A feature, not a bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hack required 'unrestricted access'

They plugged into the CAN bus

The news here is that things look pretty secure.

Re:A feature, not a bug?

[ArylAkamov]

Agreed, probably just plugged a laptop into the CAN bus and reprogrammed the ecu.

Should be titled "Car ECU reprogrammed using programming port"

The Police Shouldn't Be That Worried...

[damn_registrars]

If the Impala is being hacked, it should be rental car companies worrying about this. The Impala is one of the most common rental cars out there, and do car rental companies check the engine bay and OBD II ports when cars come back in? I doubt it. If someone did something nefarious to a rental car (or several over time) it could be a big problem for the agency.