Around the Net
More Issues Found With Connected Cars; Researchers Hack VWs
- TU-Automotive, Wednesday, August 17, 2016 9:05 AM
Have a Volkswagen? Better buy a steering wheel lock. Researchers at the University of Birmingham, in concert with German engineering firm Kasper & Oswald, have found a wireless hack to unlock any VW built between 1995 and early this year. Translation: VW's awful year just got a lot worse. The hack doesn't require anything fancy either. Just $40 (£31) for a radio receiver and some reverse engineering allows the contraption to intercept any VW wireless key fob, so long as it's within 300 feet of the vehicle. With one intercepted signal, it can create a clone and then use that cryptographic key signal to unlock the car. The hack also impacts some Audi,SEATand Skoda vehicles. Scary stuff.
Can't wait for the day of the news conference when one, or several auto makers get a clue and announce that "connected" and "autonomous" cars is a very dumb idea. For some reason, these folks think that anything we do has to be connected to swipping a smart phone, but hackers just show how easy it is to just "Swipe" a car with a swipe of a screen. The subscription to Common Sense has been canceled in this country for a long time, the tech geeks having the most forfieture. On the brite side, who wants to steal a V-dub anyway? Looks like cars aren't the only things getting hacked:
http://www.pravdareport.com/news/science/tech/17-08-2016/135351-hackers_cyber_weapons_usa-0/