CIA Mission On Next-Gen Cars; Are Connected Cars ReallySafe?

Cyber security is considered as the major hurdle for tomorrow's self-driving and today's connected cars, which is equipped with computers and a host of communications routes that are vulnerable to attacks.

If consumers are to trust smart vehicles, they must be safe from attack. According to experts a remote attack on a fully autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or brakes would be a disaster with no manual control over the vehicle.

The strategy of automakers should be to reduce the number of communications gateways to crucial systems and opt for services offered by third parties to go through a single secure path.

WikiLeaks documents reveal that CIA is citing "vehicle systems" and a car operating system from QNX, as "potential mission areas" for the CIA's "Embedded Devices Branch" to consider.

The QNX operating system is used by most of the global car manufacturers. In 2015, researchers managed to turn off the engine of a Jeep Cherokee through a wireless connection. This resulted in the recall of 1.4 million vehicles by FCA.

Tesla was the pioneer to introduce ‘over-the-air' technology in which the software updates are sent remotely to cars. Tech experts stated that such updates are a way in for the hackers.

Cyber Security is considered as a major threat for the next-generation vehicles. With the cars getting more and more electronics and wireless technology, it can lead to attacks which might cause serious problems for the automakers.