Hiroyuki Inoue, associate professor at Hiroshima City University’s Graduate School of Information Sciences in Japan showed how an app and a custom wifi device can be ingredients for car hacking.
For the demonstration he used a 2013 Toyota Corolla Fielder Hybrid and was able to control its doors, speedometer displays and the accelerator, reports the Japan Times.
Cheap WiFi Device
You must be thinking this custom made wifi device must be very expensive but no it cost just 75000 YEN or 82 USD to the professor. Once it was made, the professor (profile) inserted it into the port near the steering wheel of the car and he was done.
Basically, the port is there to allow mechanics to perform the maintenance of the car and is directly attached to the car’s internal CAN bus, which is the hub for all the data.
Once the port was placed, the professor connected the device to the smartphone and made the car do what he wanted.
Car’s Systems paralyzed
But, that’s not all, the professor was even able to DDoS the car’s system by sending a huge amount of data to paralyze the car entirely.
This surely has intensified the debate for the security of the internet-connected cars as in previous months there has been several such demonstrations.
The Professor will be giving a presentation on his findings in a 3-day cyber-security symposium in Okinawa today and as HackRead gets hold of the presentation it will be uploaded for our readers.
Previous cases of car hacking:
Here are some of the previous car hacking cases that took place in 2015.
Hacking Jeep Cherokee
This is not the first time when a researcher has demonstrated car hacking. In July 2015, a group of researchers exposed a security flaw in the onboard system of a Jeep Cherokee allowing them to remotely take over the control and crash the vehicle into a ditch while sitting on their sofa about 10 miles away.
Hacking Corvette with a text message:
In August 2015, researchers from the University of California demonstrated how Corvette can be hacked with the help of a single text message. The security flaw allowed the researchers to cut the brakes and activate the wipers without the driver’s permission.
Hacking a driverless car:
In September 2015, researchers exposed a security flaw in the laser navigation system and sensors of driverless cars allowing hackers to trick the system into paralyzing the vehicle.
Hacker robbing a car:
In October 2015, in an unusual case, a hacker walked up to the car, opened the door and drove away. This quite clearly depicted how easy it was for the hacker to open the car due to its vulnerable wireless system.