Automobile Hacking

We're just seeing the beginning of this.

One would hope that manufacturers would work to tighten up their systems, learning from the computer racket, designing and testing for robust, secure and fault-tolerant systems, and have been doing so for years.

Nope.

I expect the initial response will be along the lines of the early cellular telephone industry when the public at large learned that anyone with the right equipment could listen in on their calls. (I'm talking about AMPS analog phones, long since gone. An oft-repeated comparison of the time, What's the difference between talk radio and a cell phone? There are commercials on talk radio.)

Rather than move to more secure solutions, the industry leaned on the government to make such listening illegal, including the equipment which could do it.

And that of course didn't do a thing, except make life difficult for a lot of people who needed equipment with capabilities that were now illegal. Didn't stop folks from intercepting and recording AMPS cellular at all.

So I would expect to see overly broad moves to make such actions against car systems illegal, rather than tighten up those car systems. A license to buy OBD-II devices? Don't say that's too crazy to happen.

You can bet that the car manufacturers will use this threat to prevent the release of documentation on their OBD protocols and codes, information vital to independent repair shops around the world.

Kind of hard to outlaw Bluetooth, though, and one of the entry points for these fun and games is Bluetooth connectivity...

The computer racket has been through this. Now as computers move more into cars, does the car industry learn from the history of the computer industry? Of course not.

It isn't that history repeats itself, it's that men repeat history.

(grumble grumble grumble...)

But I can't help considering this as an alarm/ solution looking for a problem.

Looks like there going to be asking for more money next.

Fear + Ignorance = Manipulation

The biggest issue the auto manufacturers will face isn't implementing security into new cars, it's how you handle those already on the road. The average life of a car now is over 12 years. If it takes 2 or 3 years to reach a point where the security systems have reached a better state of security, it will be over 15 years before that first generation of security enhanced cars could be replaced

I know your comment on DARPA was in jest - they do some wonderful work...

Actually, it's a quote from the article.

This is another argument why one should buy simple cars. If your car has "drive by wire", meaning that there is no physical link between the gas pedal and throttle, etc., then you are in big trouble if it is hacked.