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Top 5 Risks You Hadn't Considered in Connected Cars

  • Top 5 Risks You Hadn't Considered in Connected Cars-

    Third-Party Apps

    Third-party apps: Devices like Vinli, the Automatic, the Mojio and the Zubie plug into your car's OBD II port to connect you with third-party apps that the car's manufacturer doesn't have control over. While these legitimate devices and apps look like they could be remarkably useful for doing things like promoting safe driving and better fuel economy, they also could provide an easy avenue for intrusion into your car's electronic systems and one that hackers looking to replicate the Wired-Jeep experiment could exploit. It took the security industry 10 years to secure USB ports, and we could be looking at a similar challenge here.

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Top 5 Risks You Hadn't Considered in Connected Cars

  • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
  • Top 5 Risks You Hadn't Considered in Connected Cars-3

    Third-Party Apps

    Third-party apps: Devices like Vinli, the Automatic, the Mojio and the Zubie plug into your car's OBD II port to connect you with third-party apps that the car's manufacturer doesn't have control over. While these legitimate devices and apps look like they could be remarkably useful for doing things like promoting safe driving and better fuel economy, they also could provide an easy avenue for intrusion into your car's electronic systems and one that hackers looking to replicate the Wired-Jeep experiment could exploit. It took the security industry 10 years to secure USB ports, and we could be looking at a similar challenge here.

Connected car security has been a hot topic ever since the experiment in which hackers remotely ran an Internet-connected Jeep off the road. Even if the average driver isn't necessarily scared that the same thing will happen to them, connected automobiles could disrupt our everyday lives in other ways. And, with an estimated 250 million connected cars expected on the road by 2020, these disruptions could be coming sooner than you may think.

Automakers are eager to put Internet connectivity to good use – tracking down stolen vehicles, preprogramming trip routes, and even making driverless cars a full-scale reality — which Tesla is actively working on, having just rolled out its highly anticipated self-driving features. But that doesn't mean there won't also be a few side effects. Richard Kirk, SVP at AlienVault, the Silicon Valley-based provider of unified security management and crowd-sourced threat intelligence, outlines a few scenarios.