In a few years, hackers will be able to take control of a car

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In five years at most hackers of a hostile country or malicious terrorists will be able to massively control most cars on the streets of a city, causing unavoidable millions of deaths.

The nightmarish scenario -which may soon be no longer a scenario- presented to the British Government one of the world’s leading experts in car software security, Professor Justin Kapos of the University of New York, according to the London Times .

The professor stresses that any car built after 2005 has electronic equipment that hackers can exploit as a “backdoor” to put it under control from a distance. Even some older vehicles built after 2000 may have the same fate.

Mr Capos stresses that many lives may endanger and characterize the issue of “urgency” in terms of national security now. That is why it calls on the automakers, as soon as possible, to close the safety gaps in their car software.

As he says,

“modern vehicles provide “open doors” to hackers, resulting in hostile states being able to use cars on the streets of a country like Britain as a weapon against its citizens. And this is not in an isolated way as in a terrorist act, but orchestrated and on a large scale”.

Indeed, it seems likely that hackers are already causing such “experimental” road accidents from a distance, without anyone saying that a “finger” is hiding behind it.

“If there is a war escalation with a country that has strong cyber capabilities, I would be afraid of the cybercrime of the vehicles. Many of our enemies are nuclear powers, but any country with the ability to launch a cyber attack could kill millions of citizens by crushing their cars!“,

warned Mr Capos.

As he said,

“as soon as hackers can “snap” on the vehicle, they can send messages to their brakes, deactivate the steering wheel and lock people in their cars, as well as do other things that no one would want to happen.”

For this, he stressed that governments should make it compulsory to upgrade the software security of all vehicles.

With Capos’ warnings and recommendations, other British experts also agree, calling on the British government and the carmakers to take the issue seriously because lives and national security are at stake.

Source: www.cnn.gr