Sometime earlier this year (2016), Eugene Kaspersky commented on the state of "connectedness" of the newer automobiles - on how this symbiosis of several digital components (talking over a CAN bus) is going to invite/foster hacking attacks. An accompanying demo disabled a Cherokee this way, to show what hackers can do to the cars of today.
In the meantime, I had another scenario playing in head. Automated driving is in its infancy (Google cars is demo-ing), but one thing we understand is that it will involve a lot of connected micro-devices inside the car talking over the cloud to a massive central controller (server). Where there's a technology, there exists a way to reverse engineer it. What if we have hackers taking over a fleet of Google Cars and asking for a ransom?
"We have taken control one thousand cars, and hence over a thousand lives. The cars are our slaves now. One command, and they would drive off the road. Somebody gets hurt real bad. The cost to mitigate this situation (ie have us relinquish control) is 100 billion dollars!"
To some extent this is the pulp fiction generator in my head at work. But sometimes reality comes overlapping.
In the meantime, I had another scenario playing in head. Automated driving is in its infancy (Google cars is demo-ing), but one thing we understand is that it will involve a lot of connected micro-devices inside the car talking over the cloud to a massive central controller (server). Where there's a technology, there exists a way to reverse engineer it. What if we have hackers taking over a fleet of Google Cars and asking for a ransom?
"We have taken control one thousand cars, and hence over a thousand lives. The cars are our slaves now. One command, and they would drive off the road. Somebody gets hurt real bad. The cost to mitigate this situation (ie have us relinquish control) is 100 billion dollars!"
To some extent this is the pulp fiction generator in my head at work. But sometimes reality comes overlapping.
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