With the online car, comes online viruses. What, you thought we could just have nice things and NOT somehow pay a horrible price? There’s ALWAYS a horrible price. You can own an incredibly powerful computer that fits in your hand but you’ll miss out on real life. You can be connected to all the friends you’ve ever known but you’ll forget what friendship actually is. Always a price, folks. Always a horrible price.
Reuters reports that hackers employed by Intel’s McAfee security division have been holed up in a garage somewhere on the west coast trying to break into a car. Have you tried the coat hanger trick, guys? Sorry.
Car computer security is causing a lot of worry because the technology surrounding car computers is growing fast. Whenever a technology grows fast, you can be sure that the security element and the regulatory elements will be lagging behind, thus increasing the risk of bad guys.
“You can definitely kill people,” said John Bumgarner, chief technology officer of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit organization that helps companies analyze the potential for targeted computer attacks on their networks and products.
To date there have been no reports of violent attacks on automobiles using a computer virus, according to SAE International, an association of more than 128,000 technical professionals working in the aerospace and the auto industries.
Yet, Ford spokesman Alan Hall said his company had tasked its security engineers with making its Sync in-vehicle communications and entertainment system as resistant as possible to attack.
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