After the Jeep hack

Car makers need to speed up security technology

Hacker Chris Valaseks: “If consumers don’t realise this is an issue, they should, and they should start complaining to car makers.”

Graham Scott

14 October 2015

It’s just a few weeks since two hackers gained remote access to a Jeep Cherokee driving along the road.

They were ten miles away but Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek changed the music on the infotainment system, put the wipers on and, most serious of all, could knock out the accelerator as the car was driving along.

When the car had slowed they could put the brakes on – or off - and kill the engine.

That hack, run by Wired Magazine, has led Professor Kevin Curran to suggest that the car industry follows the airline industry. The senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers said: "On planes, we have to rely on the airline manufacturers knowing better and erring on the side of safety," he said. "Why can the same not be true of car manufacturers?”

Professor Curran feels there is a rush to market and that security is still an afterthought, with little regulation in the automotive field over connective technology.

Hacker Chris Valasek echoed these comments: “If consumers don’t realise this is an issue, they should, and they should start complaining to car makers. This might be the kind of software bug most likely to kill someone.”

Valasek and Miller gained control of the Jeep through the UConnect system, which uses a mobile data network to connect with other services. The hack let the pair get into the infotainment system and then their commands spread to other systems in the vehicle via the CAN bus network.

The pair have shared their data with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for the past nine months. In July FCA issued a recall for 1.4 million vehicles that the data showed could be vulnerable to hacking. Because the system uses “embedded cellular activity”, this is only available to vehicles in the USA, and a FCA spokesperson confirmed that the recall does not affect any cars sold in the UK.

Even so, Professor Curran’s warning about manufacturers paying more attention to their security rather than focusing on the latest gadget is timely. As he said: “We’ve never been in the position before where someone can cause so much destruction to a car from such a great distance."

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After the Jeep hack

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