Volkswagen has a technology problem: It fixes things by hiding them

Volkswagen is in a lot of trouble for installing software on some of its diesel cars that figures out when they are undergoing emissions tests so it can adjust the cars to put out nitrogen oxide at acceptable levels.

That’s likely to win the company billions of dollars in fines, but it’s not the first time the company has hidden problems rather than fix them.

Just last month, security researchers delivered a paper that showed three ways to get around the Volkswagen lockout system that prevents its cars from being started unless the correct key with the correct chip embedded is used to crank it over.

The paper was noteworthy for the ingenuity of the three attacks it outlines but also for the length of time it sat on the shelf before being delivered to the public. It was ready to go back in 2013 but Volkswagen got a court order to block it then, and that was nearly a year after the researchers had told the manufacturers of the hardware about it under the principle of responsible disclosure.

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