The tech world brings joy and delight. Here’s how hackers use this model of car stereo to trace the code of a car key.
Now they call them infotainment systems. The classic speaks of Anglo-Saxon extrapolation that you want for one reason you want for another has entered the common Italian language. In this period of globalization there are examples of this. That’s it.
Infotainment, part information tool for cars, part entertainment for the motorist. It uses as its main interface, a screen through which everything gravitates: from satellite navigation to connectivity with smartphones, from Apple CarPlay and AndroidAuto. From the stereo system to the radio.
Certainly a delight for motorists, who go to bed with the touch screen, unaware, and here the delight becomes a cross, which several car infotainment systems are vulnerable to a potentially life-threatening hacker attack. Not only.
Even for those who don’t use infotainment and resort to certain car radiosthe situation doesn’t change much: hackers have gone so far as to exploit a certain model of car radio to trace the key code, for example, at which point stealing the car is child’s play.
The exploit that takes control of the car
With infotainment, it is becoming increasingly easier for cyber criminals to actually take possession of other people’s cars. As? With an exploit, for example, that could be used to take checking a vehicle’s brakes and other critical systems. Remotely.
A somewhat chilling report from the NCC group has revealed disarming simplicity with which you take control of the cars, sending data via digital audio transmission radio signals to the Infotainment system connected to the Internet, via a mobile telephone network.
Same goes with the car radio
Changing the subject does not change the situation. If instead of the now classic Infotainment, we have a car radio that connects to the internet, the situation is very similar. Only the exploit changes. Not the substance. A clarifying example.
If our car radio it remained on with the car closed (whose key is perhaps electronic), it won’t take a medium-high level hacker long to hack into the software remotely and steal the codes that will allow him to access the car with extreme ease. A paradox? Yes, but up to a certain point since the quality of specific models of machines that have renounced the manual key is expanding. In these cases there is only one claim: no distractions, maximum concentration.
