A security researcher used a homemade $ 60 system to outsmart self-driving car lidar sensors that cost thousands; he was able to trick an autonomous vehicle into slowing down and even launched a denial of service attack on a self-driving car’s tracking system so that it came to a complete stop.

Lidar, a remote sensing technology, is most commonly known as the circular “eye” mounted on the roof of most self-driving cars; it acts somewhat like radar as the lasers spin around to scan the area and detect objects. Lidar devices come in various sizes and prices. The lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) market is estimated to be a one billion market by 2020; it’s not used exclusively for driverless cars as seen in recent news about autonomous golf carts and surveying drones. Yet Jonathan Petit, a principal scientist at Security Innovation, believes lidar sensors are “the most susceptible technologies” in self-driving vehicles.

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