Podcast: Protecting Cars with AV-Style Detection

Kaspersky Daily editor Brian Donohue sat down with Dr. Charlie Miller, the notorious Apple hacker and Twitter security engineer, and Chris Valasek, the director of security intelligence at IOActive, for a short podcast. Valasek and Miller accomplished a rare feat last year by making normal human beings care about computer security, if only for a few minutes.

They did this by hacking into the electrical control units (read: onboard computers) in a Toyota Prius and injecting codes in the controller area network bus (read: the network that connects the onboard computers). By replicating the codes that the ECUs deploy to initiate all sorts of safety, crash detection, and convenience features – like automatic braking, seatbelt locking, and parking assist – they managed to make the car swerve while in motion, tighten the driver’s seatbelt, and even disable the brakes, a trick that caused Miller to crash into the back wall of his garage.

You can find great videos of Miller and Valasek’s exploits all over the Internet.