{"id":3276,"date":"2020-10-20T16:16:21","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T15:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scrapcarnetwork.org\/news\/?p=3276"},"modified":"2025-02-26T07:06:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T07:06:16","slug":"are-we-looking-at-a-future-of-haunted-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scrapcarnetwork.org\/news\/are-we-looking-at-a-future-of-haunted-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we looking at a future of haunted cars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s what could happen. You\u2019re driving down a long country road in the pitch black of night. (Maybe it\u2019s one of Britain\u2019s most haunted roads<\/a>, who knows.) Without warning, an otherworldly force suddenly seizes control of the steering wheel. It wrenches itself back and forth as your car resists all efforts to bring it back under control. Your car doors unlock with a click, and the wind begins howling around you as the windows yawn open. The radio goes haywire, and the wipers flicker back and forth across your windscreen. You wrestle with the car as it continues hurtling into the night.<\/p>\n

OK, so it seems ludicrous at first. Haunted cars? Nonsense. And yeah sure, we embellished it a bit, but to be honest, the truth isn\u2019t much less dangerous. The jury\u2019s still out on the existence of actual poltergeists, but tech experts will happily tell you about ghosts in the machine. We\u2019ve already told you in a recent post about how cars are becoming less mechanical and more like computers, and as we all know, the trouble with computers is that they can be hacked. So could malicious actors really take control of your car? And if so, how can this be prevented? These are the questions that the automotive industry is currently grappling with, and right now it doesn\u2019t look like there are easy answers.<\/p>\n

How could hackers seize control of cars?<\/h2>\n

Basically, the big problem is that for cars to become more intelligent, they need to become more complex, and the more complex they become, the more vulnerabilities they can potentially develop.<\/p>\n

The first thing that probably springs to mind is the interior function and critical systems of the car. Let\u2019s be honest, even something as simple as a hacked climate control system could make driving the car deeply unpleasant, even if you were in otherwise full control over it. And it doesn\u2019t bear thinking about if that same hacker was able to do something like starting or stopping your engine, or affecting your accelerator or brakes.<\/p>\n

But those are just the most obvious routes. Some attacks could be rather more subtle – but no less terrifying – by messing with the car\u2019s perception of the world around it. You see, self-driving cars need to have their own \u2018senses\u2019 in order to safely navigate themselves around obstacles and other vehicles. Companies like Tesla and Cadillac have already manufactured vehicles which can autonomously change lanes and use the internet to communicate with each other, keeping their distance from other vehicles and adhering to traffic signals.<\/p>\n

\"wheels<\/p>\n

So that begs the question: what if someone was able to exploit a software vulnerability in a self-driving car, and affect these senses?<\/p>\n

A common technique that manufacturers are already preparing for is GPS and LIDAR spoofing, which involves basically tricking the car into thinking the road is laid out differently than it actually is in reality. Or, its senses may be scrambled to the point that it\u2019s detecting things that aren\u2019t really there. In other words, your car could be the one \u2018seeing ghosts\u2019.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, a hacker could remotely activate features like vehicle tracking, which means they\u2019d know the car\u2019s every movement. We\u2019ve already talked about how your car probably knows a surprising amount about you<\/a>, so if it\u2019s hacked, someone else could have access to all that precious driver data. Essentially, it\u2019s like your car gets \u2018possessed\u2019 by a malevolent force. And just like in the movies – that means that everything it knows, they know.<\/p>\n

Hackers might even be able to take control of autonomous cars on a mass scale, hijacking massive amounts of vehicles at once. Tesla boss Elon Musk has mentioned a hypothetical example in which a group of hackers take control of thousands of navigational systems at once, redirecting whole fleets of autonomous cars to Rhode Island as a prank. Scary to think that even one of the more harmless examples involves waves upon waves of vehicles mindlessly lumbering towards a single destination, like a brand-new iteration of the walking dead.<\/p>\n

So how are we fighting the ghosts in the machine?<\/h3>\n

Now, here at Scrap Car Network, we don\u2019t necessarily have the tech expertise to know how these attacks can be performed, or how they can be defended against. But thankfully, the people who do are already hard at work thinking about the solutions to these sorts of problems.<\/p>\n

The French government funded Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission has already produced a system which it says can block software attacks that aim to scramble the car\u2019s senses, such as those we\u2019ve detailed above. And ethical hackers all over the world are being invited to attack newer cars so that manufacturers can pre-emptively work out their vulnerabilities, and what can be done about them.<\/p>\n

One such ethical hacker, information security researcher Charlie Miller, has said that \u201cby reducing the amount of attackable code, we make the vehicle more secure and eliminate concerns about the inherent problems of code dealing with potentially malicious inbound data\u201d. In other words, the cars with the most efficient designs will the ones that are probably the most secure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A big focus for manufacturers will be \u201cOver the Air\u201d software updates, which the car will receive wirelessly. Part of their job will be to make sure that the car continues to be safe and secure. If you think about the the antivirus updates you get for your computer, the underlying concept is basically the same, although some manufacturers have been quick to reassure potential buyers and investors that these OTA updates will be \u2018a different level\u2019 to what we have in our computers and laptops today.<\/p>\n

Even so, some OTA updates might be vulnerable to \u2018man in the middle\u2019 attacks, in which hackers intercept the updates while they\u2019re in transit. Therefore, they\u2019re obviously a big security focus for manufacturers at the moment, and will be a permanent priority going forward.<\/p>\n

We could go on, but the reality is that driving an autonomous car in future is likely to involve a trade-off between risk and reward. But then again, when you think about all the accidents that happen on UK roads each year, when has that never not been the case?<\/p>\n

And of course, if you\u2019re ever involved in such an accident yourself, you can count on us here at Scrap Car Network to be able to help you scrap your car for maximum amounts of cash, whether it\u2019s petrol or diesel, dumb or autonomous, or powered on magic and dreams. Chances are if you can drive it, we can scrap it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s never been easier to get your own instant online quote – all you have to do is enter your car reg and postcode<\/a> into the fields on our site, and we\u2019ll get you your online quote before you can say scrap my car. Curious to find out how much yours is worth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s what could happen. You\u2019re driving down a long country road in the pitch black of night. (Maybe it\u2019s one of Britain\u2019s most haunted roads, who knows.) Without warning, an otherworldly force suddenly seizes control of the steering wheel. It wrenches itself back and forth as your car resists all efforts to bring it back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":2646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n