Report: Cars are vulnerable to wireless hacking

[AtheistCrusader]

38. Abuse of related wireless systems.

For instance, the radio that your car uses to determine if the driver or the passenger has the active key fob, wireless locks, wireless ignition. If that radio stack has a vulnerability, you're in, because the security system is linked into the ignition and other top level systems.

It's even hooked into the telematics system that can create inputs into the car's mechanical systems, for instance, the system that informs the doors to lock when the vehicle gets up over 5mph. If you can get into the part of the bus that informs systems of vehicle speed, maybe you can get from there, into the digital speed proportional steering, etc.

They either need to remove what has now become industry-standard technology, OR expend massive effort on securing components that are, by their nature, totally transparent and unknown to the consumer. The only time today that consumers find out what ODN or Telematics is, or does, is when it breaks or someone has broken into it and done something bad.

Right now cars are a highly proprietary network of computer systems, that is obscure and arcane, but has an entry point (wireless systems), and therefore vulnerabilities, and all the systems in that network trust each other.