Researchers demonstrate carjack over net

27 Jul 2013

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If you thought hacking was all about attacks on websites and online fraud and stuff had nothing to do with your physical safety, think again.

With programmers claiming to have been able to hack into a car's computer system and taking control of some of the vehicle's most important functions, there may be some really scary possibilities that you might have guard against, next time you take to the wheel.

According to Charlie Miller, a security engineer at Twitter, and Chris Valasek, of the security firm IOActive, they were able to steer a Toyota Prius and disable its brakes by installing a device under the wheel.

According to the researchers, the gadget could be placed in the car by anyone who even had fleeting physical access to the vehicle. They say once key safety features had been reprogrammed, the box could be disconnected, without a trace of evidence of the reprogramming.

Valasek said, they had full control of braking and could disengage the brakes so if the driver were going slow and tried to press them, they would not work.

He added, they could turn the headlamps on and off and honk the horn adding they had control of many aspects of the automobile.

The research comes at a time when manufacturers are installing increasingly intricate computer systems, for drivers to access web services.

There have also been reports of some companies experimenting with self-drive technology pioneered by the likes of Google.

However, according to a spokesman for Toyota who spoke to Sky News it was impossible to gain access to its cars' systems remotely and added the computers it used were "robust and secure".

The Washington Post reported how Miller and Valasek demonstrated the attacks to Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg. When Greenberg took the wheel, Miller and Valasek activated the car's self-parking feature as the car was driving down the road, which led to the steering wheel jerking from side to side.

Since the car was on an empty country road, no damage was caused; a similar stunt on a crowded freeway could have easily triggered an accident, according to the report.

They showed they could also disable the brakes while Greenberg's vehicle was in motion, in another demonstration. No harm was caused though as the vehicle was travelling slowly in an empty parking lot, however, again the attack could have had severe consequences at higher speeds.

It was possible to carry out the attacks because modern cars basically are a computer network on wheels.

With a grant from DARPA, the government agency that brought the internet and self-driving cars, the researchers dismantled a Ford Escape and a Toyota Prius and examined the scores of embedded computers that controlled the vehicles' systems.

After gaining access to the vehicles' internal networks, they found out a way to tweak the cars' systems to cause mischief. Their findings would be detailed at next month's Defcon conference.

The researchers coordinated the attacks as they sat in the backseat. According to experts, if these could only be performed with physical access to the vehicle, it would not be too scary.

However, according to Greenberg other researchers had previously demonstrated that some cars had onboard wireless capabilities that could be compromised remotely. They say the two results taken together pointed to a very real danger that in the future, cars would be vulnerable to deadly attacks by hackers thousands of miles away.

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