Despite thieves regularly finding ways to boost cars by exploiting vulnerabilities in modernĀ keyless locking systemsĀ and researchers demonstrating how attackers could fiddle withĀ car settings, theĀ infotainment system, theĀ break system, theĀ steering system, andĀ so on, weāre yet to witness actual safety attacks that resulted in hackers disabling brakes or turning the steering wheel.
One of the reasons must surely be that cybercriminals are generally after money and not that interested in harming people for the fun of it, but perhaps another is that itās currently very difficult to prove that attacks like these happened.
āIf an incident happens there is currently no entity that will investigate such a possibility. Even more so, in most cars there are no measures monitoring for such incidents. So if you try and succeed, no one will even know, not to mention launch an investigation,ā notes Nathaniel Meron, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at C2A Security, a provider of automotive cybersecurity solutions.
And, though the IT networks of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have already beenĀ breached by ransomware gangs, vehicle owners are lucky that those criminals have not yet switched to in-vehicle networks attacks to ābrickā cars and demand money.
If and when that happens and depending on the scale of the attacks, Meron recons that they could even bankrupt an OEM.
But while itās difficult to say when this āgrace periodā might end, OEMs should accept as fact that one day it surely will, and they should use this time to work on defenses.
Securing vehicles from potential cybersecurity threats
