Tag: vehicles | Page 3

Cybercriminals hacking into vehicles pose major concerns

September 27, 2021/in Computer Security

COLORADO SPRINGS — We face cybersecurity threats every day on our devices and online accounts, but the hackers have now set their sites on something that could be even more dangerous, our cars.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs are working to better understand these threats and are sharing some of what they know.

“They can control all the major functions of the vehicle. So, they can control your door locks, they can control your acceleration, your breaks, your turning,” UCCS Assistant Professor of Computer Science Dr. Gedare Bloom said.

With funding from the National Science Foundation and the State of Colorado, Dr. Bloom and his team are on a mission to better understand these cyberattacks.

“So this is absolutely a national security issue. We rely on vehicles for everything. They are a critical infrastructure,” Dr. Bloom said. And these hacks are already happening. A Global Automotive Cybersecurity report by Upstream Security analyzed more than 200 cyber incidents in 2020.

The report found in one case a hacker took control of an entire connected vehicle fleet by exploiting a vulnerability. According to the research, there has been a 99% increase in cyber incidents in 2019 and a 94% increase year-over-year from 2016.

“So we saw the Colonial Pipeline where the attackers took down infrastructure,” Dr. Bloom said. “So if an attacker can take down one model of vehicle across the country simultaneously all of a sudden they have a huge lever to extort money out of the manufacturer of that particular model.”

Also, a hack on a trucking company would be a disaster when combined with a labor shortage and supply chain issues. “One semi-truck carrying a load of freight is probably as valuable as anything else that a cybercriminal can capture,” Dr. Bloom said.

The experts say any vehicle with connectivity could be subject to a hack, but newer vehicles with modern technology are the ones researchers are working to improve security measures.

“Modern vehicles that connect through 5G, cellular connections, or even through internet infrastructure,” Dr. Bloom said.

So, if you’re looking to buy a new car, researchers say it’s important to prioritize cybersecurity when making your…

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New cybersecurity tech protects computer networks in vehicles

August 1, 2021/in Computer Security

Representational Image

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New York: A team of US researchers has developed a new machine learning-based framework to enhance the security of computer networks inside vehicles without undermining performance.

In collaboration with experts from Virginia Tech, the University of Queensland and Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory devised a technique called ‘DESOLATOR’ to help optimise a well-known cybersecurity strategy known as the moving target defense.

DESOLATOR, which stands for deep reinforcement learning-based resource allocation and moving target defense deployment framework, helps the in-vehicle network identify the optimal IP shuffling frequency and bandwidth allocation to deliver effective, long-term moving target defense.

“The idea is that it’s hard to hit a moving target,” said Dr Terrence Moore, a US Army mathematician.

“If everything is static, the adversary can take their time looking at everything and choosing their targets. But if you shuffle the IP addresses fast enough, then the information assigned to the IP quickly becomes lost, and the adversary has to look for it again,” he explained in a statement.

The research team used deep reinforcement learning to gradually shape the behaviour of the algorithm based on various reward functions, such as exposure time and the number of dropped packets, to ensure that DESOLATOR took both security and efficiency into equal consideration.

“Existing legacy in-vehicle networks are very efficient, but they weren’t really designed with security in mind,” Moore said. “Nowadays, there’s a lot of research out there that looks solely at either enhancing performance or enhancing security. Looking at both performance and security is in itself a little rare, especially for in-vehicle networks.”

In addition, DESOLATOR is not limited to identifying the optimal IP shuffling frequency and bandwidth allocation.

Since this approach exists as a machine learning-based framework, other researchers can modify the technique to pursue different goals within the problem space.

According to Army computer scientist…

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Everyone Will Want to Charge Their Vehicles Fast, These Entrepreneurs Bet | by Steve LeVine | Jun, 2021

June 4, 2021/in Internet Security

The trick will be keeping all the innards cool

A new fast-charging station at JFK Airport in New York. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty

Some time, years in the future, our transportation mindsets may change — we may forget all about what we now regard as the convenient corner gasoline station, and the reliably quick fill-up while rushing to an appointment or dropping off the kids. Instead, most of us will have new muscle memory and simply plug in our electric vehicle as soon as we get home, so it’s all charged up in the morning. If we happen to occasionally need added juice — say, for the random time we are on a long holiday — charging stations will be concentrated at intervals on highways. Otherwise, we are now watching the twilight of the gas station.

Or so assert lots of first-movers who over the last six months have written to tell me how wrong, wrong, wrong I am to argue that we will need nearly ubiquitous fast-charging stations before mainstream American motorists will relax and look seriously at buying an EV. They say they charge up at home, have left bad memories of smelly gas stations behind them, and that so will everyone else.

Lest I be accused of secretly hording buggy whips, I agree that behavior changes, and that it very well might in how we plan — or don’t — our future routine travel. But, to the degree it happens, multiple legacy automakers like Volkswagen and GM have decided that it won’t be before the middle of the decade, when sticker prices are set to drop, and they hope droves of mainstream buyers start to snap up their new EV offerings. So some of the automakers have put out requests to the research community to develop batteries that can be charged up in no more than 30 minutes.

Quincy Lee, CEO of a Seattle-based startup called Electric Era, comes from the ubiquitous-fast-charge-is-a-prerequisite school of EV futurism. Lee says his company has developed a cooling mechanism that handles the biggest problem in EV fast charging — overheating of the battery. When electrons are shoved into a battery at great speed, they cause extreme stress on the materials inside. At this stage of battery technology, if you fast charge your EV as a routine, you are more…

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Myanmar Security Forces Cut Internet; Rolls in Armoured Vehicles to Major Cities

February 17, 2021/in Internet Security

After nine days of mass protest demanding a return to civilian rule, armored vehicles have rolled into the Myanmar cities and cut internet access. The armored vehicles appeared in Yangon, Myitkyina, and Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state on Sunday evening. After that day, near the Sule Pagoda in central Yangon, more than a dozen police trucks with four water cannon vehicles were deployed.

“Internet Shutdown”- a major tool in protest

As a sign of averting the protest, the Myanmar coup last week saw an internet shutdown. Again, a near-total internet shutdown has come into effect from Monday, 1 am. Early Monday morning, the internet blackout lasted eight hours dropping the connectivity to 15% of the ordinary level. Even the crackdown on protests has drawn international criticism. A resident of Yangon, Win Tun told a news agency, “To do bad things, the military has shut down the internet. We didn’t sleep the whole night so we could see what happen”.

Also Read: Myanmar Ends Civilian Rule, New Zealand Suspends Military and Political Ties after the Coup

Junta fired to disperse protesters

To disperse protesters at a power plant, on Sunday, security forces opened fire at them. In the Northern state of Kachin, soldiers were deployed to the power plants, leading to a confrontation with demonstrators. The police were seen aiming long guns into the air amid sounds that resembled gunfire. Local media stated that few of the people were injured by the rubber bullets that were fired into the crowd. But, there was no immediate confirmation of a death toll and no comment from the government.

Civil Disobedience Movement

Since February 8, many staff had stopped coming to work causing delays to international flights. The junta has threatened action against the civil servants and ordered them back to work. The civil servants and the government employees are also on strike, in addition to the protests that result in the disruption of train services throughout the country. Even the work of many government departments had effectively ground to a halt. Richard Horsey said, “This has the potential to also affect vital functions- the junta can replace engineers and doctors, but not power…

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Tag Archive for: vehicles

The trick will be keeping all the innards cool

“Internet Shutdown”- a major tool in protest

Junta fired to disperse protesters

Civil Disobedience Movement