Another week is underway here at Gadgets Towers, and although Summer looked as if it may finally banish Winter and Spring at the weekend, any thoughts of BBQs and evenings in the garden were quickly dismissed with an absoloute downpour on Sunday afternoon! With my first festival of the year only a few weeks away I know I’m certainly hoping that Summer isn’t too far away, or that at least we can bid goodbye to the rain….
I recently got a new car which was more than a slight update on my previous one. For example my last one still had a traditional style odometer where the numbers actually went round, that’s how old it was. New cars have all sorts of electronic bits and pieces in them, from the display that we see, to all the bits that mechanics use to diagnose faults when servicing, to the everyday processes that the car carries out when you are just driving around. So I was quite worried to see that researchers have shown that cars are actually very easy to hack.
Of course they need access to the vehicle at some point as they don’t (yet) connect to the internet on the go or anything like that, but with a simple programme they can cause all sorts of havoc from the seatbelts tightening to something like the brakes not working, or the engine cutting out. At one point the researchers had the display in the car they used for their demonstration countdown from 60 to 0 and during the last few seconds had the hazard lights flashing and the horn honking, before at 0 the engine switched off and would not re-start.
As I’ve already noted, although the ‘virus’ was activated remotely the researchers did need direct access to the vehicle in the first place to install the various proceedures they needed. Of course there is always the chance that your car could become self aware like the Stephen King book Christine….
RSS XML Feed