Imagine this: You’re cruising along when the car suddenly brakes. The doors lock. It starts accelerating backward. A hacker thousands of kilometres away has taken control of your car over the cellular network. This is how it happens, as explained by a video from the good folks at Motherboard.
“When you are driving an automobile today, you are driving a big computer system that happens to have wheels and a motor,” says a security researcher interviewed by Motherboard. And there are definite vulnerabilities in CAN bus, the network at the heart of your car that communicates with everything from the windshield wipers to the engine. In the video, you can watch information security researcher Mathew Solnik take control of a car from his laptop.
If it’s any consolation, hacking a car is not easy, and this is definitely not the simplest way for someone to take you out. So take heart — there are plenty of other things to fear in the world than car hackers. [Motherboard via Digg]