Gearing Up for Disaster: Growing Cybersecurity Concerns Around Autonomous Vehicles
By T D
The field self-driving cars is new, exciting, and sexy. Why wouldn’t we want our cars to drive us around? However, in a world where connecting things to the internet is becoming increasingly common but cybersecurity is lacking, self-driving cars offer a large potential vulnerability for malicious entities to target. A few weeks ago, an academic research team discovered a way to wirelessly read and clone a Tesla Model S key fob with under $600 of equipment and in less than 2 seconds. This discovery would enable them to steal any Tesla Model S vehicle, which costs upward of $74,000. Although Tesla has since created a PIN lock feature for the car, owners who do not make use of it are still vulnerable to car theft. Even more concerning, the researchers’ ability to break Tesla’s supposedly high-end encryption paints a concerning picture of their overall security, especially given the self-driving features Tesla has introduced on its newer models. The Tesla vulnerability is just one in a busy recent history of vulnerabilities found in cars connected to the internet.
A recent survey found 67% of Americans are concerned about the cybersecurity of self-driving cars, suggesting that the companies developing these vehicles need to do much more to increase their vehicles’ security in order to gain public trust. Given the defensive nature of security, it’s impossible to anticipate all possible attacks. In fact, there is no way to absolutely ensure that any internet-connected car cannot be hacked or manipulated in some way. Every time we get into a car, we trust the driver with our life. Given these concerns, can we ever fully trust a self-driving car?
