Imagine driving along the road and suddenly your car starts to brake by itself, turns the engine off and locks the doors, completely out of your control. It sounds like a nightmare situation for most drivers, even if it seems to be a bit of a fantasy, but according to recent research from America this could well be the future of car crime.

Whilst conducting studies research teams have found that they can effectively hijack the majority of a car’s computer systems and could effectively control the car remotely even whilst the target car was being driven. Once the team had ‘hacked’ the car they could disable the brakes or brake individual wheels on demand as well as control other components in the car including the radio, heating systems, lights and the instrument panel. Due to the lack of encryption installed on the Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol used for communicating among the car’s components and communication between components requiring no form of authentication, the team was easily able to use one ECU to control any of the others in the car.

The Car Shark program in action: This shot is from a stationary car, even though the speedo indicates otherwise.

The Car Shark program in action: This shot is from a stationary car, even though the speedo indicates otherwise.

The reason all of this is possible is thanks to the modern car’s reliance on computers to monitor the numerous systems in the vehicle. With the average luxury car containing roughly 100 MB of code spread across a large number of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that are all communicating with each other its quite easy to see how effective an attack on these systems could be.

One of the research teams, from the Universities of Washington and California, had to gain access to the car by using the diagnostic port used by garages to assess the engine before servicing the car. Of course this means that they have to gain access to the inside of the vehicle before they can take control, but there are several scenarios where this could be more than possible. I’ve handed my keys over for valet parking or for getting the inside of the car cleaned properly and those are just two possible scenarios. As soon as the code is in place though the car’s computers are under the control of somebody else and could even be programmed to delete itself without a trace once it has completed it’s tasks.

How tyre pressure sensors talk to the main ECU

How tyre pressure sensors talk to the main ECU

When combined with further research conducted by a team at the University of South Carolina and Rutger University, the reading gets even more uncomfortable. The researchers found a vulnerability allowing for wireless access to the car, by attacking the tyre pressure sensors. The tyre pressure sensors warn drivers if the car’s tyres become dangerously deflated and have to communicate with the car via a wireless signal and it is at this point that the team managed to interfere with the signal and display a false warning on the dashboard. This would certainly be enough to make the average driver pull over to at least check their tyres, presenting yet another opportunity for potential criminal activity.

All of these are what if situations at the moment though, but the research certainly is showing the scary possibilities of technology in the wrong hands.

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