Want to know how to prevent your car being hacked? Keep it simple - BizNews
(Bloomberg View) — All the frenzy over car-hacking would make more sense if the risk weren’t so easy to reduce: Just drive a simple car. The success of two security researchers in remotely hacking a Jeep — and taking over its accelerator while in motion — has prompted a class-action suit, a Senate bill to require automakers to protect cars from such attacks, and a 1.... That said, cars have long been susceptible to hacks. Criminals have stolen thousands of cars — including David Beckham’s BMW X5 SUV in 2006 — by cracking the code needed to disable the immobilizer, a theft-prevention device that is obligatory in the European Union and that 86 percent of cars in the... The immobilizer employs a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that won’t allow the engine to run unless the car’s original key, which transmits the necessary code, is present. Bloomberg News reported on Friday that Volkswagen, the world’s biggest car manufacturer by volume, had spent two years trying to suppress a report — now finally public — concerning a flaw in the chip that powers immobilizers. Messing with the immobilizer is not the same as taking over the car’s entire computer system, as hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek did with the Jeep. Source: www.biznews.com
