SAN FRANCISCO - Bloomberg News wrote last week that scientists are devoting attention to entertainment computers inside vehicles and potential security risks, such as hacking.
What increasingly worries scientists, notes the news source, is that entertainment computers could be manipulated to tell the safety computers what to do. "There clearly is a vulnerability," Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, noted. "All these electronics we're bringing into cars seem to exacerbate that."
A National Academy of Sciences panel, including Lund, elevated these concerns in a Jan. 18 report reviewing the cause of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. While safety and entertainment systems are intended to be separate, "it is not evident that this separation has been adequately designed for cybersecurity concerns," the academy wrote, which also agreed with U.S. regulators who said they found no evidence the Toyota incidents were caused by faulty electronics, Bloomberg reports.
Automotive engineers say they aren't concerned that a hacker will take over a car and drive it off a bridge, but they do want to help automakers spot vulnerabilities. For example, the news source notes that car thieves could exploit security weaknesses to remotely open and start a car, or a spy could listen to conversations inside a car, according to Stefan Savage, a UC San Diego computer science professor who co-authored a paper on ways to hack into cars.
Savage and his co-author, Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington, found vulnerabilities in telematics systems, which make the connections between cars and mobile communications. They also successfully inserted an infected CD into a car's compact-disc player and directed it to control safety systems. The news source notes that Savage and Kohno are not aware of any real-world examples of car hacking.
"The issue for the industry and for the government is that you're one really bad situation away from it becoming a thing that people think about," Savage told Bloomberg, adding, "Much better to try to address it early."
Andre Weimerskirch, CEO of Escrypt, a security company with automotive clients, told Bloomberg that any electronic system in a car ?" from brakes to radios ?" is a potential target for hackers. While the risk is hypothetical so far, automakers and regulators need to address it now, he said.
"Once you have access through the infotainment system, the question is could a hacker get access to the safety-critical components," Weimerskirch said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile is researching auto cybersecurity, according to NHTSA spokesperson Lynda Tran. "The agency recognizes there are potential vulnerabilities, especially those related to future connected vehicles, that need to be fully understood and addressed," she told Bloomberg, adding, "NHTSA has been conducting exploratory research and is now planning further efforts that would evaluate the vulnerabilities and possible counter-measures on an industry-wide basis."