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Hackers Could use Connected Cars to Gridlock Whole Cities

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:00PM   
from the you-can't-get-there-from-here dept.

AnonTechie writes:

In the year 2026, at rush hour, your self-driving car abruptly shuts down right where it blocks traffic. You climb out to see gridlock down every street in view, then a news alert on your watch tells you that hackers have paralysed all Manhattan traffic by randomly stranding internet-connected cars.

Flashback to July 2019, the dawn of autonomous vehicles and other connected cars, and physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Multiscale Systems, Inc. have applied physics in a new study to simulate what it would take for future hackers to wreak exactly this widespread havoc by randomly stranding these cars. The researchers want to expand the current discussion on automotive cyber-security, which mainly focuses on hacks that could crash one car or run over one pedestrian, to include potential mass mayhem.

They warn that even with increasingly tighter cyber defences, the amount of data breached has soared in the past four years, but objects becoming hackable can convert the rising cyber threat into a potential physical menace.

Hackers could use connected cars to gridlock whole cities

[Source]: Georgia Tech

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Original Submission

• Re:There is a lot of fun predicting where this can Re:There is a lot of fun predicting where this can (Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:45PM (3 children)

  by isostatic (365) on Tuesday July 30 2019, @06:45PM (#873226) Journal

  Hello good citizen. We are commandeering your vehicle

  Is this currently legal in the U.S?

  I've seen it a few times in films where the cop says "I need your Car/Phone/Whatever", but it feels like it opens up the force to a major lawsuit.

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• Re:There is a lot of fun predicting where this can (Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:31PM

  by Alfred (4006) on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:31PM (#873269) Journal

  Who knows. private property rights are a thing in the USA but I would let them have it so I don't get shot for resisting.

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• Re:There is a lot of fun predicting where this can Re:There is a lot of fun predicting where this can (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:34PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:34PM (#873296)

  .. so many obvious angles .. truckers block highways when protesting work conditions/rights today .. how about car locks doors and drives you unwillingly to the police (movie: Home), or elsewhere (tv: Silicon Valley) .. car stops when enough sensors are interfered with ... car-to-car comms is a client-side validation vulnerability - my car tells your car that this route is blocked, pass it on .. ffs .. *obvious [soylentnews.org] stupidity* .. the real world will behave just like the Internet. The irony is that watching this disaster unfold is like watching a slow motion car crash ..

  ~ IL.

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  • Re:There is a lot of fun predicting where this can (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:17PM (#873317)

    No hackers. It's just a Windows Update.

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