Vehicle Computer Security Jeff Smith

Am I safe operating my computer controlled vehicle?  Most people don’t understand the computers that run their cars  Many people feel a virus could potentially infect their car and “take over”  Disastrous effects if this were to happen

What are these computers that are so common in modern vehicles?  Two categories  Vehicle Systems Control (VSC)  Navigation Tools  No interaction between the two systems

Vehicle Systems Control (VSC)  Control the operations involved in the mechanical duties of the vehicle  Engine Control Module (ECM)  Anti-Lock Brake Systems (ABS)  Ride height control  Four-Wheel-Drive Engagement  Transmission Shift Point Determination  Horsepower Delivery  Road Hazard Analysis

How VSC Work  ROM computers that contain no RAM to run applications  Simply perform tasks written into them and report errors  These errors are read through a port underneath the dash  If changes need to me made to computer, an entire new unit must be installed

VSC Vulnerabilities  To compromise these systems one would have to do the following…  Know how the system is written and rewrite a new process that did the newly desired task  Locate current computers and replace with new unit  While possible, the attack would have to be vehicle specific and very specialized

Navigation Systems  Find directions  Locate Stores  Endless opportunity with interaction between vehicle, cell phones, and GPS

How They Work  Many variations, most use GPS to run the navigation systems  Recently, these systems have gained the capability to connect through cell phones and even the internet to run the navigation systems

Navigation Systems Vulnerabilities.  Open to a wide range of vulnerabilities  Through use of cell phones and internet, attacks have various platforms to attack from  Main thing to realize, if an attack was successful, the worst-case scenario would be an “error” message on the screen

What is being done to prevent attacks?  From the beginning of computer controlled vehicles, engineers have realized the major effects of an infected system and have designed with this in mind  Do not give any capabilities of VSC computers to run outside programs, virus or not  Give no connection between navigation systems and the VSC  Provide little access to the VSC to prevent tampering with

In the Future?  Vehicle manufacturers are looking into the idea of making the VSC computers interact with the internet  This would open up huge opportunity for systems to become compromised  Many advances in internet security will have to occur before this is safe enough to become possible

Sources    ction=newsDetails&newsUID=c794e3d0-7b af07-c65dfd75fcd6&newsType=News ction=newsDetails&newsUID=c794e3d0-7b af07-c65dfd75fcd6&newsType=News  omobile_viru_1.html omobile_viru_1.html 