http://www.gadgetsmagazine.com.ph july 2019 49
In a news report by Motherboard, a tech news
site under Vice media, a hacker was able to
monitor the location of thousands of vehicles
by breaking into their GPS tracker apps. At one
point, the hacker also turned off the engines
of tens of thousands while they were still in
motion.While hacking is an inevitable fact of digital
and cloud-based life, cybersecurity firms are
working hand in hand with automakers to
add layers and layers of protection to keep
autonomous vehicles safe.Hacking
cars
Security
by
Design
Motherboard said the hacker, who goes
by the name L&M, claimed into hacking
more than 7,000 iTrack accounts and more
than 20,000 ProTrack accounts. These are
monitoring apps companies use to monitor
fleets through GPS tracking devices in India,
Morocco, the Philippines, and South Africa.The Washington Post reported that what
worries manufacturers and cybersecurity
experts are the keyless locking and ignition
systems. Using the “relay hack” method,
hackers trick the cars into recognizing that
the owner is just nearby and remotely opens
the car.Symantec’s “Building Comprehensive Security
in Cars” white paper, said that methods
such as digital capture of location, signing
data on capture, and using secure boot and
code signing to ensure that firmware is not
tampered may effectively elude hackers. The
company also suggests in the white paper
that over-the-air (OTA) update could be
just one of the many ways automakers can
remotely resolve an issue should a hacker get
into networks and cause damage to cars and
endanger the lives of passengers.Security companies are working to minimize the
attack surface.One such effort is the “Security by Design”
philosophy wherein software engineers have
integrated security from the conceptualization
up to the execution, which makes the foundation
secure. Automakers are also advised to choose its
supply chain meticulously because third-party risks
are inevitable.Emerging technologies are not without risks even
if they do not involve autonomous cars. However,
automakers and security firms have banded
together to come up with solutions to prevent the
hacking of cars. The danger will always be there
but mitigating it has become a priority for many
companies.