Recently, automotive security threats have heightened from the realm of possibility to frightening reality. The issue has suddenly turned out to be much more critical as more and more cars keep on becoming connected, electric and have utilized autonomous driving features. The issue with these cutting-edge cars is that in order to offer numerous more sorts of services they are expected to remain connected, and once that happens then they are, by definition, "hackable".
Once these hackers get into your internet connected cars, they could disable the airbags, brakes, door locks and even steal cars. The recent episode of Tesla being hacked by Chinese hackers was enough to cause quite a stir. The impact of the hack was that the Chinese security scientists had discovered an approach to turn on the brakes remotely and getting the doors and the trunk of the car to open and close while blinking the lights, through this perplexing hack they could control the car by means of both Wi-Fi and a cell connection.
Likewise, there were a few findings of researchers who, as of late revealed a defect in the way the distinctive parts of a connected car interacted with each other, their work even took after a few exhibitions of remotely hacking into and taking control of the cars.
However, none of these hacks have yet been shown with customary vehicles on street. In any case, they, without a doubt showcase how cybersecurity is progressively turning into a major challenge to the car industry, particularly as vehicles increasingly incorporate driverless innovations and technology.
These have indeed worried the governments of a few nations to such a degree, to the point that they are now contemplating to release a set of guidelines for the matter, which underscores the requirement for various companies to cooperate in order to build such flexible vehicles whose security can be overseen all through their lifetime. In any case, the question still stands as to how the cars, as they are effectively becoming computers on wheels, can be kept safe from hackers.
One answer to this question might be that the diverse frameworks or systems that make up a car are progressively intended towards cooperating to enhance their proficiency thus, they all should have the capacity to convey. Including autonomous systems that make cars somewhat or completely self-driving, implying that the vehicles additionally must be connected to different cars and infrastructure out and about.
Then again, more features and functionality in cars are giving rise to more complexity. A single vehicle is currently equipped with millions of lines of codes, set up together by various manufacturers in various ways, this often makes it hard for the security analyzers to know where to look. For example, if the software recently utilized by Volkswagen to circumvent emissions limits had been a malicious virus, it might have taken months or years to discover the problem.
Nonetheless, the next big challenge is probably going to be the designing such vehicles that match security with safety. Be that as it may, in the longer run as the competition in the sector is gradually rising step by step and the companies are becoming solely reliant on the most recent autonomous and connected technologies to set themselves apart from the others and win new clients.
Their rivalry no doubt often brings about the reluctance to further share insight about more cyber threats and vulnerabilities or even cooperate to develop more secure designs, therefore, getting the car industry to coordinate is more important as the greatest threat that the society will withstand in the coming years as transportation changes are vehicle cybersecurity.
Medha Bhagwat
