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So, guys today I want you to imagine a situation where you are slowly driving down the street and listening to your favourite melody. A beautiful evening scene where people are going back to home after their 9-5 jobs, children running on the footpath and fancy billboards all around. Thinking about dinner with your partner tonight you drive along the street with a smile on your face.
As you reach near next signal you hit the brakes to slow down but, the brakes aren’t working anymore plus the music has changed from your sweet melody to Tokyo Drift, oh yeah.
You can’t figure it out what the heck is happening to your car and just start panicking.
Guess what, your car got hacked! Oh yes, your car is hackable; especially if it is the latest one with all those fancy features that were supposed to make your ride easier are now getting you in trouble. And finally the guy who hacked into your car is a ‘Need For Speed’ fanboy; now imagine the rest.
Pretty scary imagination huh. Now come back to reality, which is even scarier.
An actual hacking experiment was done in which two white-hat hackers (computer security specialist) remotely killed the transmission of a Jeep Cherokee in a hacking test.
Which led the firm to recall around 1.4 million cars. At this moment the world realized that a car can be hacked; cool stuff right.
Check out that in youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs
There are other videos too which shows how a car can be hacked.
You must have the knowledge that today’s cars are embedded with lots of e-controllers and wireless connections to the outside world. This gives you the data which says about 152 million actively connected cars will be on roads by 2020 and more than 2 billion can be seen in 2025.
Now, let’s look at the ECU (Electronic Control Unit) which is fitted in your car which operates operating systems and controls functions like, acceleration, transmission, suspension, brakes, steering, and engine control.
Hence, like other software or firmware installed devices, this one too has loopholes in it which can be exploited by hackers.
They also want a large amount of data which involves traveling habits, the destinations we visited etc., which they can sell for good money. It has become imperative to protect our vehicles from these kinds of hackers and thieves.
The modern vehicles are at high risk of hacking and the manufacturers should focus on a lifecycle management mechanism which allows a controlled lockdown of some features of the car.
The manufacturers need to spot all minute loopholes through which the hacker can get inside. It is interesting to know that the more software and features will bring more loopholes to the can and one more time repeating the old saying ‘every system connected to the worldwide network is hackable’.
But, there’s nothing to worry as a majority of cars now on roads and we drive are not that hi-tech to be hacked while driving. They may be able to destroy some software but that’s it, they can’t make an accident or are able to blow up your engine or something. The risk we are fearing is a bit far in future and, the semi-autonomous and autonomous cars gearing up to be launched commercially are being tested and tested again by the manufacturers.
Now, the final question is, can we make a full proof unhackable car?
Oh yes, we can. Use of firewall to defend the hackers is the best method we have. There are three main methods we could use.
They are;
Host-based defense
Stronger development standards
Ongoing security assessment
While the world is talking about fully automated cars of the future, there is also a fear of being invaded by hackers and stealing of data and systematic man-made accidents by hackers, killers, assassins etc.
What if your tech-savvy neighbor can hack into your car? Would you dare to end up in a brawl with him over the noisy music from his room?
With growing tech and additional features being embedded into your can which makes it connected to the manufacturer brand, internet, and GPS, the manufacturers need to develop a solution which makes the car full proof from hacking.
With new technology comes new hassles but, we don’t stop developing and inventing new stuff. We all need to be careful and work towards a safe future where everything will be connected to everything.
Info Courtesy: auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com
Video Courtesy: YouTube channel WEIRD
Image Courtesy: Flickr
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