Autonomous vehicles are starting to become a part of our lives. Safety must be a primary concern for autonomous vehicle manufacturers and fleet operators if vehicles are to have the potential to create a safer future for everyone. Cyber security company ESET examined autonomous vehicles and shared its recommendations for safer driving. How should security be in autonomous vehicles?
Safety in autonomous vehicles!
Fleets of driverless or autonomous vehicles currently operate in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Pilot programs are in nearly a dozen other cities across the United States, from Seattle to Miami. Driverless vehicles are also being developed and tested in Europe and Asia.
If there’s anything learned about computer security over the decades, it’s that any successful technology attracts entrepreneurs trying to make money, both legally and illegally. Autonomous vehicles are seen as a very attractive category for cybercriminals.
Aside from criminal activity occurring entirely in cyberspace, such as account theft targeting consumers and ransomware targeting businesses, having tools in the physical world presents some interesting opportunities:
- Profit from threatening customers about their travel history
- Remote seizure of vehicles
- Sending vehicles to a certain location to cause traffic congestion.
- Targeting busy intersections or highways during rush hour.
- Keeping law enforcement away from congested airports, train stations or bus terminals
- Obstruction of emergency services
- Covering up other organized crime activities
- Disabling safety features and causing accidents.
Another possible concern with autonomous vehicles is commercial trucks. An autonomous truck carrying valuable cargo can be stopped or diverted to a location of the criminals’ choosing. Trucks can also be used to cover transit centers such as docks where cargo is unloaded from ships.
Among many innovations, this new technology, which is especially rapidly gaining acceptance, exceeds the limits of imagination and creates new obstacles. But growing fame also attracts tech enthusiasts who can help bolster digital defenses.
Autonomous vehicles, in the form of cars that can travel the same roads as traditional human-powered cars, represent one of the biggest changes in automobile technology in the last few decades. It seems that some basic precautions learned from transportation engineering, which has a history of more than a century, should not be forgotten.
Autonomous vehicles owned by individuals or businesses must have controls that can be operated by a human in emergency situations. No matter how good AI is at driving, it may never be able to predict and respond to all that a human driver can do.
Providing steering, acceleration and braking mechanisms that can disable the AI “autopilot” could mean the difference between saving lives and “merely” being involved in an accident. Machines are good at manipulating known patterns, but humans can manipulate wildcard events that cannot feasibly be handled in automated training sets.
For vehicles intended for use as taxis or shuttle services, an emergency braking system not unlike the emergency emergency ropes or buttons used in subway vehicles must be accessible to passengers.
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