Can the terrorists now attack our cars?

COL Ted Mc — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:12:49 -0400

From the Associated Press

Automakers trying to prevent hackers from commandeering cars

DETROIT (AP) -- When researchers at two West Coast universities took control of a General Motors car through cellular and Bluetooth connections in 2010, they startled the auto industry by exposing a glaring security gap.

Five years later, two friendly hackers sitting on a living room couch used a laptop computer to commandeer a Jeep from afar over the Internet, demonstrating an even scarier vulnerability.

"Cars don't seem to be any more secure than when the university guys did it," says Charlie Miller, a security expert at Twitter who, along with well-known hacker and security consultant Chris Valasek, engineered the attack on the Jeep Cherokee.

Fiat Chrysler, the maker of Jeeps, is now conducting the first recall to patch a cybersecurity problem, covering 1.4 million Jeeps. And experts and lawmakers are warning the auto industry and regulators to move faster to plug holes created by the dozens of new computers and the growing number of Internet connections in today's automobiles.

EDITORIAL COMMENT:- This is a dastardly attack on the very second basis of American society. Next they are going to start hacking our guns.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AUTOS_HACKING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-08-05-13-04-25

Response by SSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 5 at 2015 2:14 PM

SSgt Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:14:09 -0400

I'd be more concerned about this:

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-commandeered-plane/

Feds Say That Banned Researcher Commandeered a Plane

A security researcher who was kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting a reference to its security vulnerabilities had previously taken control of an airplane mid-flight.

Response by SCPO David Lockwood made Aug 5 at 2015 2:14 PM

SCPO David Lockwood — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:14:50 -0400

It has been shown that your car can be hacked into. If you have ONSTAR or wnything like this you are vulnerable.

Response by LTC Stephen F. made Aug 5 at 2015 2:22 PM

LTC Stephen F. — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:22:10 -0400

Criminals are the biggest threat to cars followed closely by hackers in training who want to make a name for themselves COL Ted Mc.
Video gamers will probably we interested in expanding their gaming skills from whatever Grand Theft Auto and similar games have advanced to actually commandeering passing autos starting with attempts to interfere with police operations :-)
Terrorists would be most interested in targeting specific vehicular systems such as world leaders, military soft targets which would provide the biggest casualty bang per buck, etc.
SGT Randal Groover, LTC Stephen C., SGT Forrest Stewart, SPC Private RallyPoint Member, PO3 Steven Sherrill

Response by LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow made Aug 5 at 2015 2:47 PM

LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:47:57 -0400

Why not - if the hackers around here can... The most vulnerable are cars with systems like GM On-Star, FCA UConnect, Kia E-Services, etc... as well as cars with cell phone receivers for WiFi hotspots...

Response by SSG John Erny made Aug 5 at 2015 4:28 PM

SSG John Erny — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 16:28:40 -0400

If something has an IP address that is open to the internet it can be hacked. Cyber Warfare is hear and it will only grow. If a hacker can hit the brakes on all modern cars at the same time a lot of people will die or get hurt. If hackers take down the power grid on the coldest day of the year a lot of people will freeze. The things that make our life easier can also be used against us.

The best thing that anyone can do to protect them selves is use multi factor authentication when possible and never use a word that can be found in any dictionary for a password. P#rp13$0#p PurpleSoup Add some numbers to the end to make it damn hard to crack: P#rp13$0#p159357 look at your key board and it makes an X on the number pad. 159357.

Consider runing linux instead of windows, not many viruses will attack it and it is damn hard to infect in the first place. If you have to run windows run Vipre Rescue every week on the PC on top of having good antivirus: Use malwarebytes IMHOP. Then run CC cleaner every week to clear out the cluter where maleware likes to hide. IF you know what you are doing go to %appdata% folder and search for *.exe and delete any executables that are unknown.

Response by PO3 Steven Sherrill made Aug 5 at 2015 6:34 PM

PO3 Steven Sherrill — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 18:34:38 -0400

Next thing you will see is the high tech auto thief simply picking a car on the lot, hacking it, and driving it straight to the chop shop from the comfort of their living room. Nobody will every catch them because if the Police catch them they can simply drive the car into a body of water. The thief's person never being in danger, why would they care?

Response by PO1 William "Chip" Nagel made Aug 6 at 2015 2:03 AM

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 02:03:37 -0400

Heard about this on NPR the other day. If someone can, They will. 21 years in the Electronic and Information Warfare Community tells me this was inevitable. Before there were Hackers there were Black Box Men, Capt Crunchers. I was a Black Box Man and a Captn Cruncher (Using Whistles to manipulate Telephone Analog Switches) There is a reason I think the Navy Recruited me to do what I did. LOL!

Response by SSgt GG-15 RET Jim Lint made Jun 6 at 2016 4:56 PM

SSgt GG-15 RET Jim Lint — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 16:56:23 -0400

Just as we failed to imagine an airplane as a weapon..... We need to think of cars as future weapons.
What about hacking a car and sending it through a crowded NYC crosswalk? What about using a pickup truck to crash a fuel truck? These are the things I would worry about after reading this. The terrorist already have remote controlled Vehical IEDs, this could be more dependable.

Response by LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow made Jun 7 at 2016 11:51 AM

LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:51:10 -0400

It is very likely. Cars are now linked to our phones; if our phones get hacked, so do our cars...

Response by PFC Zanie Young made Jun 7 at 2016 12:56 PM

PFC Zanie Young — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 12:56:44 -0400

To answer honestly, it is more of an eventuality that it is gonna happen. The way that technology is going into our vehicles, all it takes is a very good hacker to commandeer more than a few cars. With technology constantly changing, cybercriminals are just getting smarter by staying one step ahead of the current technology and adapting against the latest security measures. At the risk of sounding negative, this is one war we would lose unless we get more nerds and techies to counteract this constantly adapting threat.