Lawmakers in Brussels and across the EU have started to discuss how to build in better standards for cybersecurity. Everything that comes on top of that makes them feel uncomfortable,' said Thorsten Held, managing director at whiteCryption, a company working with carmakers on security issues. The central flight software from retired space shuttles had around 400,000 lines, according to NASA.Īutomakers used to bashing steel and molding carbon fiber are less confident in making their computer systems resilient to cyber adversaries.Ĭarmakers 'focus on safety because it makes them feel comfortable. The vulnerability of complexityĪ modern car runs about 100 million lines of computer code. 'There's no reason to think that this car company, or just American cars, is the only one that could be hacked,' Miller told the conference.

They were able to cut power steering, lock the parking brake and force the test Jeep Cherokee to skid. The pair, now working for Uber's Advanced Technology Center, showed off a new series of hacks this August at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas - a meeting that drew 15,000 computer security experts. Their stunt, chronicled in Wired magazine, led to a recall of 1.4 million cars. They remotely accessed the dashboard system of a Jeep Cherokee and shut down its transmission as it drove down the highway. Hacking researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek last year demonstrated the vulnerabilities of a modern connected car. 'Obviously the vehicles on the streets today were not prepared for these incredibly fast-moving symptoms of connectivity,' said Thomas Born, chief security officer at Vodafone Automotive.

Those layers of technology expose vehicles to hackers who can evolve more quickly than carmakers can keep up.

Car hacking tools