This week researchers will present
a study showing what could happen if a determined hacker went after the
computer systems embedded in cars. The researchers found that, among
other things, an attacker could disable the vehicle's brakes, stop its
engine, or take control of its door locks. All the attacker needs is
access to the federally mandated onboard diagnostics port-- located
under the dashboard in almost all cars today.
The researchers point to a recent report showing that a typical luxury sedan now contains about 100 megabytes of code that controls 50 to 70 computers inside the car, most of which communicate over a shared internal network.
"In a lot of car architectures, all the computers are interconnected, so
that having taken over one component, there's a substantive risk that
you could take over all the rest of them. Once you're in, you're in,"
says Stefan Savage, an associate professor in the
department of computer science and engineering at the University of
California, San Diego, who is one of the lead investigators on the
project.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Technology Review: Is Your Car Safe From Hackers?
Author: Erica Naone
