Cyber Threats: Is Your Vehicle Safe?

for sale times; font-size: 16px;”>Recently more and more vehicles and vehicle add-ons are connected to the internet, much like home computers and using their own IP address. This causes the cars we drive to be directly affected by the many cyber threats that today exist mostly on the internet. Taking over a car remotely isn’t a new phenomenon. According to rumor this is how journalist Michael Hastings, who claimed to have access to sensitive information involving the FBI, died last year. It exists, but so far it’s been considered relatively unusual. As more and more automobile products that are connected to the net enter the market, however – products that can surf the internet via IP addresses – things get more complicated.

Hacker forums show a growing demand for car hacking tools, which are different than those used to hack computers. Once vehicles surf the net via IP addresses, however, the same tools used to attack computers become useful for car hacking as well. “You can attack a vehicle since the year 2000, but once IP addresses enter the picture things become much more problematic,” said Gil Litichever, founder of Arilou – a developer of cyber security solutions for vehicles – in an interview with iHLS. “In the past these attacks used to be considered attacks on control systems. Now, however, they’re turning into standard IP attacks and the field becomes accessible to every IP hacker. You don’t need to connect through an FM transmitter or even a phone, all you need is an internet connection.”

When it comes to computers a trojan might have some very unpleasant consequences, such as identity theft or compromised bank accounts and credit card numbers – these consequences are still mostly financial, however. Attacks on vehicles, on the other hand, directly endanger lives. “There are critical computers in  vehicles that, if compromised, can allow attackers to do many different things,” explained Litichever. “You can send malicious messages to trick the computer. Transmit messages to the computer that ostensibly came from the car sensors, for example, leading to the computer changing the way it interacts with the vehicle engine. You can cause the stability control computer to transmit that the vehicle is sliding, preventing the driver from breaking. In addition, once I have access to the vehicle’s internal network I can rewrite its software.”

“If I put an FM transmitter that transmits on a specific frequency on the road, and take a specific vehicle type with a security breach that I’m familiar with, I can create a sort of time bomb,” said Litichever. “I can make it so all the vehicles that were infiltrated will start accelerating uncontrollably at a specific time.”

The problem is not just the remote connection options for vehicles, it also involves subsystems and devices installed on board today’s automobiles. “Some devices communicate with the outside world, while these computers are connected to the same communications network used by the car’s critical computers. It means that if I manage to take over an entertainment computer, for example, I could start sending messages to the car’s internal network,” concludes Litichever.

Hat Tip: Please visit their informative site: iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

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