{"id":3370,"date":"2011-03-17T11:13:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T15:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3370"},"modified":"2011-03-17T11:14:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T15:14:09","slug":"your-car-now-needs-a-different-kind-of-firewall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/03\/your-car-now-needs-a-different-kind-of-firewall.html","title":{"rendered":"Your car now needs a different kind of firewall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Firewall\"<\/a>Growing up in my father’s auto repair business, I came to understand that a car’s firewall was that piece of the body that separated the engine compartment from the passengers.\u00a0 Back in the day (as my teen son is wont to say despite sporting such a paltry number of days), this was pretty essential hardware as engine fires were not uncommon.\u00a0 The advent of several safety systems as well as the demise of carburetors has made such fires comparatively rare.\u00a0 But modern digital automotive systems now have different safety issues requiring a different sort of firewall.<\/p>\n

Security experts from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington have successfully hacked<\/a> into a car’s onboard control system using a variety of attack vectors. In one case, they used a car’s cellular connection (similar to OnStar) to access the vehicle’s computer.\u00a0 In another, they took control using an Android phone connected to the car’s Bluetooth interface.\u00a0 In the third case, an MP3 music file, loaded into the car’s sound system, was infected with a Trojan that successfully loaded itself into the vehicle’s firmware.<\/p>\n

Now in your average car, there is a limited amount the hacker can do once he gains access to the firmware.\u00a0 He could futz with the fuel mix and mess up your gas mileage, or change all the presets on your radio.\u00a0 While this is annoying, it’s not terribly dangerous.\u00a0 It’s also not interesting enough to warrant the efforts of would-be hackers unless this is their thesis project.<\/p>\n

However, many higher-end cars may be unlocked, started, or in the case of vehicles with a self-parking features, even driven away under computer control.<\/p>\n

While this is a scary prospect, it mostly reflects car designers not yet realizing the impact of networking the vehicle control systems.\u00a0 Cars will simply need to employ the same sorts of firewalls and security software used by other computer systems.\u00a0 Which also means the same sort of constant updating to address more recent exploits and attack vectors will also be required.<\/p>\n

Ironically, I left the automotive field to pursue a career in computers.\u00a0 I know my life will have come full circle when the first family member calls because their car has a virus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Security experts have successfully hacked into a car’s onboard control system allowing it to be unlocked, started, or in the case of vehicles with a self-parking features, even driven away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,8],"tags":[113,105,112,72],"class_list":["post-3370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekypursuits","category-madscience","category-sliceoflife","tag-car-tech","tag-computers","tag-digital-security","tag-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3370"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3380,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3370\/revisions\/3380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}