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Imagine driving on the freeway at 60 miles per hour and your car suddenly screeches to a halt, causing a pileup that injures dozens of people. Now imagine you had absolutely nothing to do with the accident because your car was taken over by hackers.

Charlie Miller, a security researcher at Twitter, and Chris Valasek, director of security intelligence at IOActive, a security research company, recently demonstrated car hacks at the DefCon computer security conferences in Las Vegas. The researchers completely disabled a driver?s ability to control a vehicle. No brakes. Distorted steering. All with a click of a button. While the demos were with hybrid cars, researchers warn that dozens of modern vehicles could be susceptible.

Hackers and security researchers are moving away from simply trying to break into ? or protect ? people?s e-mail accounts, stealing credit cards and other dirty digital deeds. Now they?re exploring vulnerabilities to break through the high-tech security of homes, cause car accidents or in some extreme cases, kill people who use implanted medical devices.

?Once any single computer in a car is compromised, safety of the vehicle goes out the window,? Mr. Miller said in an e-mail interview. Modern cars typically have 10 to 40 little computers in them.

?Right now, there aren?t a lot of ways for hackers to remotely attack cars: Bluetooth, wireless tire sensors, telematics units,? he added. ?But as cars get Internet connections, things will get easier for the attacker.?

Carmakers and the government are aware that our vehicles are vulnerable. In fact, Mr. Miller and Mr. Valasek received a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, to research ways carmakers can thwart attacks. The biggest fear is the future: as cars become more computerized ? or become fully automated, computers on wheels that drive for you ? they?ll become more inviting targets.

Hackers could also turn our televisions and webcams against us, monitoring everything we?re saying and doing. Next-generation light bulbs that are connected to the Web could be tampered with. Digital refrigerators could be turned off, allowing food to spoil without your knowledge.

Some hacks could be mere practical jokes, albeit messy ones. Researchers have warned that the Bluetooth-enabled INAX Satis model toilets, which can be controlled via a smartphone app, could easily be hacked to spray water up instead of down. In response to warnings that its toilets could be hacked, INAX said it issued a security update for its toilets this month.

Yes, in the future, you will need to download security updates for your toilet. :huh:

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well, Powers That Be generally hates your non-computerized cars, the PTB want you to replace your 'outdated' cars with the new computerized, PTB-cloud-controllable cars, and yes you don't own it, you just license your cars.

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There's a really very simple solution.  Do not connect essential car systems to remotely accessible computers.

 

There, problem solved! :p

You'd think that would be as clear as day. 

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