Experts Have No Confidence That We Can Protect Cars and Streets From Hackers (dailydot.com)

Patrick O'Neill writes: Cars and streets are now connecting to the Internet for a long list of transportation and safety benefits but the new tech has drawbacks. Experts from government, industry, and academia say they have no confidence they'll develop a secure system that can protect users from tracking and privacy breaches. Their opinions were captured in a recent survey (PDF) from the Government Accountability Office. "The government is coordinating with the transportation industry on the Security Credential Management System (SCMS), a project to verify that basic road-safety messages come from authorized devices. ... At this point, it’s not clear who would even run such a system. Previous plans pointed toward car industry control, but the Transportation Department is now looking into playing 'a more active leadership role' for V2I as well as V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) networks. That role would include setting security and privacy standards when V2I and V2V networks become operational."

Comments

Car infotaiment systems are a trojan horse

[sinij]

Car infotainment systems are a Trojan horse by the car manufacturers in search of forced obsolescence.

Modern cars normally last 12-15 years, no connected IT system would survive this long without constant maintenance. Thing is, it is all but certain that there won't be security patches developed for that long.

With this in mind, buying a connected car is insane.

Re:Car infotaiment systems are a trojan horse

[sinij]

Lease payments will go up if resale value tanks due to obsolete security. For example, $30000 new car would cost $8000 as a 8 year old car. If it will only sell for scrap because of a remote steering and brakes hijack that 8 year old value is effectively $0. This will increase cost of ownership by average of $83/mo over these 8 years. This means that normal least payment of about $350/mo on a $30000 car is now almost $450/mo