This archive report was first published on 10 January 2020.
January 10, 2020, Las Vegas - The growing trend of connected cars has created a new road hazard: the potential for disastrous cyber-attacks.
Israeli cybersecurity firm GuardKnox demonstrated the threat at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where a hacker remotely took control of a virtual car, causing the steering wheel to malfunction.
GuardKnox chief executive Moshe Shlisel warned that hackers could exploit the increasing connectivity of cars to sabotage systems or commandeer controls, citing the example of a hacker remotely taking control of a fuel tanker truck and sending it to crash into a building.
"It's September 11 on wheels," Shlisel said in an interview at CES.
Henry Bzeih, a former member of the Council for Automobile Cybersecurity, echoed Shlisel's concerns, saying that connectivity is the reason why cybersecurity has become as integral to vehicle engineering as crash safety and fuel efficiency.
"Now, all elements have to be designed with cybersecurity in mind," Bzeih said.
Israeli startup Upstream logged more than 150 cybersecurity incidents involving automobiles last year, twice as many as in 2018, with the majority of those hacks involving remotely car door locks.
"The ultimate worst-case scenario would be if somebody applies one of the car functions when it's not supposed to do that, and does that across multiple vehicles," said Upstream vice president Dan Sahar.
"For example, someone hits the brakes on all vehicles of a specific model at the same time. That would be catastrophic," Sahar added.
