Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Car hacking

Security researchers presented work at the USENIX conference today showing an easy way to hack into a car's electronics using a small gadget that plugs into modern dashboards. The port they're taking advantage of is commonly used to monitor the location and speeds of these vehicles. Once the researchers' dongle is attached, they can use SMS messages to transmit commands to the car's internal network. They demonstrated this by remotely cutting a Corvette's brakes. "Though the researchers say their Corvette brake tricks only worked at low speeds due to limitations in the automated computer functions of the vehicle, they say they could have easily adapted their attack for practically any other modern vehicle and hijacked other critical components like locks, steering or transmission, too."