Your Car Gets Hacked, Now Someone Could Slam On Your Breaks, What Now?

I would rather have a computer driving a car than a person because I've seen a lot of really bad human drivers out there.


Someday in the future,you will call a cab, and then a few minutes later, a car without driver and freelancer will approach the sidewalk.

You will jump in the back seat and off you go, leaving the drive to the computer.

Not so fast.

Cars without driver are really coming. Carmakers are already testing them on highways in selected cities in the United States with drivers on standby ready to take control of the steering wheel if something goes wrong.

But let's face it. Although automotive engineers are developing some amazing navigation technologies to run smoothly in a driverless vehicle, it could take some time to persuade passengers to take a leap of faith and spin the wheel to a robot.

In addition to the daunting task of designing smart, driverless cars, there is another potential flaw that has not been talked about much. And that is the considerable risk that the software being designed for the autopilot of the future fleet of autonomous vehicles could be hacked.

"Non-driver cars have all the problems of regular car safety, and then add more computers and sensors and pull the human out of the front seat, making it a difficult problem," says automotive safety researcher Charlie Miller.

It is not an insurmountable problem, according to Miller, but that "we will have to solve if we are going to depend on these vehicles".

Miller knows what he's talking about. Two years ago, he and another state-of-the-art security researcher hacked a Jeep Cherokee remotely through his Internet connection.

It was a controlled experiment, says Miller. "It was only with one test subject who had agreed to be part of the experiment, so we did not do it to any random car."

That's how he did it (do not try it at home!): "The radio, the main unit of the car was talking to the Internet to get things like traffic updates and I have a cell phone, and the computer in the car I had the Equivalent of a cell phone connection to the Internet and I was able to connect to it and there was a vulnerability in its code that I took advantage of.Then I was able to run code in your car.I could then send messages to the other components like the brakes and the Address and tell the address that 'hey, you should turn the wheel now!' And the car would respond and do that. "

Since surprising the auto industry with that demonstration, Miller has been working, first for Uber, and now with a Chinese startup named Didi, to make experimental and self-sufficient cars resistant to hacking.

"I was one of the few people who hacked a car, so I think it's perfect for me to work on a car to make it unhackable. I know the way bad guys come in, and I can help try to find ways to get there Where they can not."

So car manufacturers are taking this security issue seriously? "I think so," says Miller. "I mean, they have to get people to trust the vehicles, not only that they're going to take them to the right place and safely, but they do not have to worry about the threat of cyber security. Your users trust, and part of that is to make sure the security is done properly. "

Miller says automotive researchers already understand the problem fairly well and know how to make cars safer. The task ahead, he says, is mostly a matter of doing the hard work of engineering and designing and tracking. And then tests, tests and more tests. This will take time. That's why Miller says it's important to get the problem started in order to get ahead of the curve. In other words, do not wait until "we have a million cars with no driver driving around and say, 'Oh, maybe we should have thought about safety,'" says Miller.

Remember that taxi without a futuristic driver that goes up to the curb? Would Miller jump in the back seat and read his newspaper indifferently while the robot drives?

"Absolutely, I would go in. I would rather have a computer driving a car than a person because I have seen a lot of the really bad human drivers out there."

Source: What If Someone Could Hack Into a Driverless Car

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