Hacking a car? "Oh, come on, Dhiyanu. It’s ridiculous! No one can and would ever do that".
Do you think so? That too in this bizarre world and age? It's certainly not far-fetched. A technological fact indeed. But, it's too early to worry about the potential threat of your car.
Now it is with the car makers and law makers to decide how further and faster they can push technologies to make our drives safer. Sadly, they remain mum or downplay the issue.
Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, two engineers associated to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are doing research into the potential threat of car hacking. By connecting a laptop physically to an OBD (On-Board Diagnostic) port, they take control of anything from odo instruments to brakes. They have released their findings and the software that they developed to hack the car at the hacker convention Defcon in Las Vegas early this month. If these findings helps researchers and automakers to find and fix the car industry's potentially deadly security problems, serves the society.
It is rather terrifying, as you can see in the video below. The duo makes fun in their 2010 Toyota Prius by changing its speedometer and fuel gauge values at will, tamper with acceleration and braking, disable power steering or jerk the wheel, turn on/off headlamps and horn even after car turned off, etc. Thanks to the extreme dependence his experiment shows how much of car's functionality can be influenced by seizing its computer systems.
Hacking a car isn't new and many attempts earlier have proved its theoretical possibility. There are several experiments done to unlock the cars which uses key-code systems and to deactivate vehicle immobilizers using wireless computer applications. Thanks to the extreme dependence on electronics and computers, modern cars, just like computers, cell phones and other electronic gizmos, are susceptible to such threats. Almost each and every individual operations in a car - from engine functional mechanisms, transmission, steering, acceleration and braking to door locks, airbags, driver info, etc. - all rely on electronics. The level of automation and passenger comforts increases with new technologies and the more money you pay. In developed nations, cars are connected to internet and GPS and complex networks dictates individual cars.
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| Anatomy of the Prius hack by Charlie & Chris (Photo Courtesy: Forbes) |
But it is too early to be worried about the car hacking threat at the moment. You might think terrorists may play with cars to make deadly disasters, or thieves may use hacks to unlock your car to steal or whatever. That's definitely not the case yet. Look at the way the Prius dashboard and interiors have be stripped to connect their computers in the above video. Though wireless and remote attack of a car is theoretically possible and have been proved, it remains extremely unlikely especially here in India. Some sort of physical works have to be carried out inside the car to enable such foul play.
Even then, this issue calls for more attention from researchers and automakers. Without better security in place, it’s all potentially vulnerable. Though automakers including Toyota, Ford and General Motors continue to claim that their cars are safer and hacking requires serious business inside the cars, they continue to keep mum and downplay the issue. The threat extends to all cars other companies as well. They have to expand their R&D in this regard and work on technologies and systems to counter such attacks.
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| 2010 Ford Escape and Toyota Prius: Car hacking potentiality goes beyond Ford and Toyota. |
Governments necessarily have greater roles to play too. Monitoring the application of fool-proof technologies which are immune to such threats by the state owned testing agencies would help to save its citizens. In India, we have National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project (NATRiP) which can involved in this concern of car hacking. At the time when our Indian defence agencies are battling to avert cyber attacks by Chinese, the issue of car hacking would grab no attention as of now. But in future, may be yes.
Image Courtesy: www.retrogamenetwork.com, www.forbes.com
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