How Hackable Are New Cars?

When buying a car, consumers look for crash ratings and the amount of airbags, but they’re missing information about one critical key safety feature; the security of the car’s computer network. Security researchers Dr. Charlie Miller, a security engineer at Twitter, and Chris Valasek, Directory of Security Intelligence at IOActive, want to change that. In a talk at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week the pair presented a 92-page paper entitled ‘A Survey of Remote Automotive Attack Surfaces’. They dug through the schematics of 24 different newer vehicles and found the more complex and integrated a car’s network, the more hackable it became.

“The most hackable cars had the most [computerized] features and were all on the same network and could all talk to each other,” Miller told Dark Readings. “The least hackable ones had [fewer] features, and [the features] were segmented, so the radio couldn’t talk to the brakes.”

The 2014 Infiniti Q50 was the most hackable car because of features such as remote keyless entry and a smarphone app were integrated with components that control the engine and braking, giving hackers an easy entry into the cars systems. The least hackable was the Audi A8, which does not have integrated networks and even has a security gateway to block outside commands from dubious radio sources.