Own a new Chrysler – well a hacker could take control of you car while you are driving it!
The date is July 29 2015, imagine someone miles and miles away with a laptop, a cell phone and some malicious software. You are driving along with your kids on a summer vacation when suddenly you tune into a new radio station and all of a sudden you loose control of your vehicle and crash!
Does this sounds like a page from The Twilight Zone? Well it’s not – it’s real. Earlier this month Chrysler announced that it had a confirmed vulnerability for most of it’s cars and trucks since 2013 (almost 1.4 million vehicles) and was forced to issue a recall by the national highway traffic safety administration (NHTSA).
Click to access RCRIT-15V461-7681.pdf
I perused this document that was designed to help dealers fix this vulnerability and I am not exactly sure that most of us would be able to do this. You should keep in mind that flashing firmware can leave any device in a state that will not function.
For some of us who feel bold enough to try it there are instructions on how to do it yourself but if you are like me and would just take the time to get it done by the dealer just imagine for a moment that some mechanic at your dealership takes a USB drive that flashes one car and decides to use it over and over again. What if someone was smart enough to download a Trojan to your radio before you or someone like you gets around to taking your vehicle in to get the fix. If that mechanic reuses that USB drive your car could get hacked again and maybe this time it is even worse.
Security is something that we all take for granted. Gone are the days when the government could protect you from safety and health issues when it comes computers. We have too many devices now and in our haste to computerize everything, safety has fallen out of scope.
We, as a society, need to demand that our governments legislate security into our products and cloud based services with legislative oversight, mandatory compliance and testing (remember when automotive insurance and seat belts were voluntary?) Until then, we are all left to fend for ourselves. Get ahead of the learning curve and educate yourself on how to avoid getting hacked. Think about safety when it comes to using the Internet and computers of any kind. After all we are now living in the future…
Security Analyst - Jeff Soehner CISSP, GXPN,GPYC,GMOB,GCIH 