[BITList] Hackers Can Use Music Files to Hijack Your Car's Computer

[franka]

I suppose it had to come but its scary non the less
frank

Not only will listening to that new Justin Bieber jam irrevocably damage 
your soul, but it may give hackers a way to remotely take control of 
your car. A multi-university research team has discovered a way to 
commandeer the firmware of an unnamed 2009 model car via a stealth bit 
of data embedded in song files. The trojan file in question was able to 
upload into the car via a burned CD played on the car's stereo system. 
This vehicular virus could give troublemakers with a nearby cell phone 
the ability to control functions of the car via Bluetooth including 
opening doors and turning the car on and off.

That rap song about jacking cars might literally jack your car.

The research team that presented the musical hack among others in a 
recent paper to the National Academy's Electronic Vehicle Controls and 
Unintended Acceleration 
<http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/committeeview.aspx?key=49236> as 
part of their ongoing research studying the security concerns of 
computerized cars.

Scary stuff! On the bright side, the researchers tend to think that car 
hacking will not turn out to be a very pervasive issue. Car electronics 
tend to be walled systems---the firmware in a 2008 Mazda is (for now) 
completely different than that used in a 2010 BMW. It also takes a lot 
of time and investment to learn the loophole of these systems and it 
would likely only work with one particular model.

According to researcher Tadayoshi Kohno, this type of car hacking is 
"unlikely to happen in the future, but I think the average customer will 
want to know whether the car they buy in five years ... will have these 
issues mitigated."

As we travel down the inevitable path of making everything "smart," 
<http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2381185,00.asp> we should 
also start to prepare for the fact that everything linked-in is also 
corruptible.

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