Make Driverless Cars Terrorist-Proof: Security Expert to Automakers

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DETROIT, MI – As U.S. automakers race to the finish line on driverless cars, they face a conundrum at least as challenging as how to integrate autonomous vehicles with vehicles driven by humans: Making them terrorist-proof.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin, speaking in Detroit Tuesday, challenged engineers to design self-driving vehicles that are impermeable to cyber-security threats by terrorists, spies and information thieves.

Carlin’s remarks came in a speech before the Society of Automotive Engineers’ 2016 World Congress, which more than 11,000 engineers, auto industry executives, consultants, academics, government and military officials are expected to attend. The event continues through Thursday at the Cobo Convention Center, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News report.

“What brings me here is this is an industry that’s on the cusp of not just an evolution but a revolution in how are cars operate, how they talk to each other,” Carlin said.

Some 220 million connected vehicles could be on the nation’s highways within five years.

As The New York Times reported, automakers are scratching their heads over a key flaw in the driverless vehicles: they’re law-and-order, following traffic regulations to the letter, resulting in collisions with vehicles driven by humans, who skirt some traffic regulations. That glitch is no small thing, but the Department of Justice official’s warning was more chilling.

Authorities aren’t aware of any threats against autonomous vehicles, but the possibility isn’t beyond the reaches of a diabolical imagination, Carlin said.

"'What are the bad guys thinking?” he said. “We've seen them be creative before.”

A manifestation of that creativity came last year when hackers were able to remotely break into certain cars and control their steering wheels from afar. Fiat Chrysler Automotive recalled 1.4 million Jeep vehicles to correct the software vulnerability.

"It doesn’t take much imagination to see how similar vulnerabilities could be used against us by our adversaries to bring about horrific results," Carlin said.

Carlin said he didn’t visit Detroit, the capital of the North American auto industry, to create panic, but to encourage automakers to be proactive about assessing security risks during he design phase.

"It's better in every respect to think of the risk on the front end," Carlin said in an interview with the Free Press after his speech. "We can't play catch up ... Assume the worst."

The autonomous vehicle market is a new frontier for automakers that could be worth $42 billion by 2025.

By some estimates, there could be 220 million connected cars on the nation’s highways by 2020, each equipped with about 220 sensors that allow occupants to look up all kinds of information.

"You can easily see how the auto industry makes for a valuable target for hackers of all stripes,” Carlin said. “You have valuable information and infrastructure that they want.”

Image credit: gmanviz via Flickr / Creative Commons