Researcher Hacks Self-driving Car Sensors
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/researcher-hacks-selfdriving-car-sensors
The multi-thousand-dollar laser ranging (lidar) systems
that most self-driving cars rely on to sense obstacles can be
hacked by a setup costing just $60, according to a security
researcher. "I can take echoes of a fake car and put them at
any location I want," says Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist
at Security Innovation, a software security company. "And I can
do the same with a pedestrian or a wall." Using such a system,
attackers could trick a self-driving car into thinking something
is directly ahead of it, thus forcing it to slow down. Or they
could overwhelm it with so many spurious signals that the car
would not move at all for fear of hitting phantom obstacles. In
a paper written while he was a research fellow in the University
of Cork's Computer Security Group and due to be presented at the
Black Hat Europe security conference in November, Petit
describes a simple setup he designed using a low-power laser and
a pulse generator. "It's kind of a laser pointer, really. And
you don't need the pulse generator when you do the attack," he
says. "You can easily do it with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino.
It's really off the shelf."
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
_______________________________________________
pfir mailing list
http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
