A Cage Named Car: The Dream and Reality of Remote Control (2014)

A Cage Named Car: The Dream and Reality of Remote Control (2014)

An inexpensive device costing only 12 pounds reportedly can control a car's brakes, door locks, headlights, and even the steering wheel from the outside. While technological advances promise convenience, they may have opened the door to new horrors. In modern cars, multiple ECUs are connected through a communication network called the CAN bus, and every function is controlled electronically. By hacking into this network, a car can easily be "hijacked.

Vulnerabilities in wireless communication devices through the OBD-II port have been revealed, and there have been a number of cases where Jeep Cherokees and Teslas have actually been hacked. More recently, "headlight hacking," in which the headlight units are removed to access the CAN bus, has been used to steal luxury vehicles.

Cars are no longer lumps of steel and rubber. Now that it has a brain called a computer and is connected to a network, its line of defense also extends into cyberspace. We may have given the keys to our cars to someone unseen in exchange for convenience.