New simulator could put an end to car hacking

The ongoing threat of hacking into modern cars’ complex systems is one we’ve heard about numerous times. The most recent hack was to FCA’s Uconnect system fitted to the Jeep Cherokee, although it was later put down to a security fault with the mobile network.

Now at team of scientists at the University of Warwick are testing against these hacking tools in a specially designed simulator. The simulator, which costs 2.1 million euros, uses a Faraday cage which stops any outside signals from interfering and allows great control over the data traffic.

“We’re going to do research that is ‘attacker in the loop’,” said Professor Carsten Maple, director for cyber security research at the university’s Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). Speaking to autocar he added, “we’ll set up as real-world an environment as we can with signals that will purport to be infrastructure, and then see what happens when a car tries to connect to them. We can set up a software-defined radio system very easily and, for example, pretend to be a mobile phone base station and then see what happens.”

Maple thinks ‘ransomware’, which will encrypt a car’s systems and then attempt to charge to recover them, could pose a real threat. “We’ve already seen Cryptolocker, which will lock a computer hard drive unless you pay — never pay, by the way — but I could envisage a scenario where malware will get into a car, or onto a phone that’s connected, and prevent it from starting, in effect locking the ECU.”