Dutch Researchers Show Connected Cars Can Be Cheaply Tracked (ieee.org)

schwit1 writes to point out an experiment undertaken on the campus of the Netherlands' University of Twente, in which two wireless sensing stations were able to cheaply pinpoint a target vehicle equipped with "smart" V2X systems nearly half the time, and track it (albeit less precisely) even more, according to Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at software security company Security Innovation. "You can build a real-time tracking system using off-the-shelf devices with minimum sophistication," says Petit. In a paper to be presented at the Black Hat Europe security conference in November, he describes being able to place a security vehicle within either the residential or the business zones of the campus with 78 percent accuracy, and even locate it on individual roads 40 percent of the time. The tracking here was accomplished by listening for transmissions emitted over using 802.11p at 5.9 GHz. Says the article: Petit is now working with Ford, GM, and other carmakers to develop strategies to help secure connected cars. One interesting finding from his experiment was that a Manhattan-style grid of roads makes it difficult for potential attackers because there are more connections between the intersections. "This raises the idea of privacy-enhancing road networks, where cities are designed with the concept of privacy at their core," he says.

Comments

Privacy-enhancing road networks

[Michael Woodhams]

New privacy violating technologies come along every few years. Road network layouts last centuries. It would be very foolish to let privacy-attack-of-the-day heavily influence your road layouts.

Re:Tracking Cops?

[PPH]

detect the presence of police vehicles in the near vicinity

Detect clouds of powdered sugar?