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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the Do-these-trick-other-vendor's-systems? dept.

Hackers can trick a Tesla into accelerating by 50 miles per hour:

This demonstration from the cybersecurity firm McAfee is the latest indication that adversarial machine learning can potentially wreck autonomous driving systems, presenting a security challenge to those hoping to commercialize the technology.

Mobileye EyeQ3 camera systems read speed limit signs and feed that information into autonomous driving features like Tesla's automatic cruise control, said Steve Povolny and Shivangee Trivedi from McAfee's Advanced Threat Research team.

The researchers stuck a tiny and nearly imperceptible sticker on a speed limit sign. The camera read the sign as 85 instead of 35, and in testing, both the 2016 Tesla Model X and that year's Model S sped up 50 miles per hour.

This is the latest in an increasing mountain of research showing how machine-learning systems can be attacked and fooled in life-threatening situations.

[...] Tesla has since moved to proprietary cameras on newer models, and Mobileye EyeQ3 has released several new versions of its cameras that in preliminary testing were not susceptible to this exact attack.

There are still a sizable number of Tesla cars operating with the vulnerable hardware, Povolny said. He pointed out that Teslas with the first version of hardware cannot be upgraded to newer hardware.

"What we're trying to do is we're really trying to raise awareness for both consumers and vendors of the types of flaws that are possible," Povolny said "We are not trying to spread fear and say that if you drive this car, it will accelerate into through a barrier, or to sensationalize it."

So, it seems this is not so much that a particular adversarial attack was successful (and fixed), but that it was but one instance of a potentially huge set. Obligatory xkcd.


Original Submission

Previously:
Protecting Smart Machines From Smart Attacks
A New Clothing Line Confuses Automated License Plate Readers
A Simple Sticker Tricked Neural Networks Into Classifying Anything as a Toaster
3D Printed Turtles Fool Google Image Classification Algorithm
Slight Street Sign Modifications Can Completely Fool Machine Learning Algorithms

 
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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @11:45PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @11:45PM (#960080)

    Last I checked, acceleration is measured in m/s^2. So is the title implying that the Tesla accelerated by 50 miles/hour/second, or 50 miles/hour/hour?

    If the former, that's pretty quick, given that the acceleration record currently is rougly 35 miles/hour/second (0-60 in 2.1 seconds, but the acceleration isn't linear). The interesting question then becomes, was this a short burst or a sustained acceleration? And if so, how long did they sustain the acceleration?

    If the latter, I'm not impressed. I can push a car uphill faster than that.

    No, I didn't RTFS, thank you.

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  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by isostatic on Thursday February 20 2020, @12:07AM (5 children)

    by isostatic (365) on Thursday February 20 2020, @12:07AM (#960088) Journal

    It went from 35mph to 85mph when it should have stayed at 35mph

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @02:25AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @02:25AM (#960142)

      My esteemed AC colleague is correct, that is still not an acceleration. Divide your 50 mph by however long it took to do it, and then we can talk acceleration.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 20 2020, @01:36PM (3 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday February 20 2020, @01:36PM (#960270) Journal

        The Tesla accelerated to a speed that was 50 miles per hour faster than the allowed speed.

        Note that the title does not say "Accelerating 50 Miles per Hour" — there is a preposition in between.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @02:56PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @02:56PM (#960290)

          Indeed, and the preposition "by" explicitly says that the acceleration was increased 50 MPH, not the speed.

          I've increased my weight by 5 lbs. I cut the power by 3 Watts. "By" uses the same units. "to" would have worked in the sentence. In the context of the article, the acceleration is irrelevant anyway. It is the speed limit that is being manipulated, not the acceleration.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Thursday February 20 2020, @06:53PM (1 child)

            by acid andy (1683) on Thursday February 20 2020, @06:53PM (#960404) Homepage Journal

            Acceleration means an increase of speed (per unit of time).

            I've increased my weight by 5 lbs.

            The Tesla increased its speed by 50 mph. That's the same as saying it was accelerating by 50 mph (over some unspecified amount of time).

            TFS didn't say it accelerated to 50 mph or that it was acclerating at 50 mph (not complete units for acceleration).

            --
            If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
            • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 03 2020, @09:48AM

              by isostatic (365) on Tuesday March 03 2020, @09:48AM (#965923) Journal

              "accelerated to 50 mph" would be fine.

              Accelerated (by an unspecified amount from a speed less than 50mph) to 50mph (in an unspecified time)

              For example

              Accelerated by 20mph from 30mph to 50mph (in an unspecified time)
              Accelerated by 20mph from 30mph to 50mph in 20 seconds
              Accelerated from 20mph at 1mph/second for 20 seconds

              The headline

              "Accelerating by 50 Miles Per Hour"

              is

              Accelerating (from an unspecified speed) by 50 Miles Per Hour (in an unspecified amount of time)

              "accelerating at 50mph" is of course nonsense.

  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday February 20 2020, @11:06AM

    by Nuke (3162) on Thursday February 20 2020, @11:06AM (#960249)

    Someone modded this offtopic, but I read the headline twice and still did not understand WTF they were on about. I only understood when I RTFA. The headline is poorly worded.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @06:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @06:36PM (#960392)

    You're one of those people who, being told you're ignoring the gravity of the situation, complains that an object cannot possibly ignore a fundamental force. Ain'tcha?