Road to Autonomous, Connected Cars is Filled with Risks

A future filled with self-driving and connected vehicles lays just around the bend — but it’s riddled with a minefield of legal, hacking and financial risks.

That was the verdict Thursday as lawyers, cybersecurity experts and software engineers gathered for the Connected Car Symposium in downtown Detroit, sponsored by the Butzel Long law firm.

Perhaps the most harrowing problem in this zoomy future of autonomous, software-packed vehicles may be protecting them from hackers. A fast-growing density of software guides these vehicles and collects data on everything from where we drive to what we eat.

Butzel Long attorney Claudia Rast said the average new car contains 100 million lines of software code, or 200 times as much as was needed to navigate NASA’s Space Shuttle.

So far regulators such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provide almost no guidance on security standards to prevent malicious disruption of those features.

Last month Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind said they plan to award $4 billion to fund demonstration projects that can help speed the development of self-driving cars.

But the problem with cybersecurity, especially in vehicles, is that identifying a problem is nearly impossible until after something goes wrong.

“Most hackers so far are focused on the IT (information technology) world because that’s where the money is,” said Michael Ridge, president of Silent Cyber, a security consulting firm based in Crownsville, Md.

That is likely to change as more services are delivered to and through vehicles by software apps, especially when drivers must pay a subscription fee to access the entertainment or other travel information.

“As cars become savvier they will be collecting, for example, health-related data that owners want to be kept confidential, or other information with a financial impact that could become attractive to hackers,” said Jennifer Dukarski, a Butzel Long attorney.

The growth of car-sharing and ride-sharing networks could compound the cybersecurity challenge, said McConnell Trapp of Speed Trapp Consulting and a self-described “white hat hacker.”

In a rental car, for instance, the moment a customers connects his or her smartphone to the vehicle, that data could be exposed to any bugs or malware that have infected phones of previous users.

Yet another layer of risk comes from the increasing use of “over-the-air” software updates to upgrade or repair various features.

Hackers can imitate legitimate manufacturers or service providers and send updates that may have nothing beneficial and could disable the vehicle.

“The vehicle doesn’t know whether the over-the-air software patch is coming from a black hat source or a white hat source,” said Brian Dougherty, chief technology officer with the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association.

Another category of challenges is how to pay for infrastructure changes that may be needed in this hotly-awaited future. As fully automated cars pass federal and state safety requirements will they be able to operate on all the same public roads as conventional cars and trucks? Will they need dedicated lanes so they can avoid hazards created by careless human drivers?

Read more of the original article in Detroit Free Press.

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