Anyone that has bought a new car in the past few years may have noticed that your dashboard is now being taken up by more display screens and gadgets than ever before. The world of automotive technology has been growing exponentially in recent years, adding what are essentially personal computers in your car. These computers can store your personal data such as call history, location, music, and all manner of other data as well as what goes on with the car, logging such events as a door opening, moving the seat around, and which buttons you pushed while you were in the car. All of these things are being recorded and stored in your car which begs the question, what are we doing to secure all of this?
Currently, there is a lack of response from the automotive community in how it intends to deal with these concerns. This slow response time could be that manufactures are still figuring it out themselves, they may not have thought this process through quite the way that they need to, and in the next few years, this is going to be a critical issue. Evidence Solutions released an article in September of 2013 that illustrated how a person can hack into a car and essentially take it over. That instance was all done with significant effort which involved taking the car apart, however, that will no longer be an issue with most cars having a USB port installed in the dash, or even easier a WiFi hotspot built into the car.
The technology and means are there, all it will take is one hacker figuring out how to exploit it to bring down the next hurdle in computer hacking. This is not to say that all manufacturers are burying their heads in the sand: Tesla Motors has said that digital security in their cars is one of their top priorities, as it should be with a car that runs exclusively on electricity. Updates to the car are done on a secure circuit and encryption protects personal data.
We are experts in Vehicle Forensics, Black Box Forensics and Infotainment Systems.
