Driving You Crazy. Your Next Car Can Be Hacked.
The Good News
Self-driving cars could cut road deaths by 80%
The Bad News
Without better security you can be at risk of car hacking and even ransoms.
You’re about to drive to work and plan on checking email and reviewing files as your car drives. You turn on your ignition and a message on the dash lights up with this message, “Pay 10 bitcoin to unlock your hacked car! This fee goes up 10 bitcoin everyday.”
There are now generally five types of hackers you are exposed to:
1) Good (?) white-hat hackers, who break security so that a weakness can be found, fixed and ultimately improved. It is like your mother-in-law finding your adult dvd collection and saying she took them so your spouse doesn’t find them.
2) Activist hackers, like the group Anonymous, who are often politically motivated. They dearly want to know what you are saying in your private emails and what are your favorite recipes, along with those ‘secret’ photos.
3) Nations, other than yours, that want to access to your data and info.
4) Supporters of extremism of which Isis is the only really credible threat thus far.
5) Criminals, who now make as much as 95% of all malware, using hacking to make millions of dollars. Imagine North Korea wanting to see the latest episode of the Kardashians, but it isn’t included in their DirecTV package. So they hack away to get what they need then resell those episodes to their constituents. Bad, bad, bad dudes.
It is this fifth group, criminals, who are motivated by money that are the biggest threat to target self-driving cars.
Well, the biggest threat, right after watching epic fails, cat videos and dancing with Justin Beiber as you ride in your car.