Hacking driverless cars is a real threat, but not simple

A couple of years ago, Wired magazine released a story about hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek taking near complete control over a Jeep Cherokee.

In the story and accompanying video, the reporter found himself powerless as the hackers were able to control his air conditioning, radio, windshield wipers, and even kill his engine while he was traveling 70 mph on the interstate.

Although the Jeep Cherokee story is alarming on the surface, Scientific American points out that the truth is not so simple. For instance, it is worth pointing out that the hackers actually owned that Jeep and that they had more than a year to work on the exploit.

Other cases of hostile takeovers usually required direct access to the car such as plugging a computer into the dashboard and often required teams of people months or years to make the exploit work in the first place.

In fact, they point out that no hacker has ever taken remote control of a stranger’s car.
Not yet.

Fast forward to today, and one of the hackers that took control of that Jeep is actively speaking out about the dangers brewing for driverless cars. In an interview with Wired, Charlie Miller sidesteps the scary but less realistic threat of hacked personal vehicles and instead looks at the massively growing taxi service industry.

With big players like Uber in the US seeking to create fleets of driverless cars to supplement or even replace its traditional drivers.

His argument is that previous car hacks were limited to the automated systems included in the car such as climate and cruise control. With a fully autonomous car, the computer controls everything. In this scenario, it could be possible for a hacker with access to the system to take complete control of the car, trap the driver inside, and drive them to a place of their choosing.

Even more realistic is a hacker that takes advantage of the fact that there is no driver in the car to just plug their laptop in and go to work. It is clear that while the future has much potential, some of that is a potential threat.