Two renowned automobile hackers – security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek – have done it again.
They’ve previously hacked a Toyota Prius and a Ford Escape, and now they’ve hacked a Jeep Cherokee.
Except this time, instead of taking over a vehicle’s systems by plugging directly into a car’s network (called the CAN bus) via a port under the dashboard, the pair have discovered a way to take over a car remotely.
Miller and Valasek, who’ve received funding from the US military’s DARPAresearch arm, will demonstrate a remote attack against an unaltered Jeep Cherokee at next month’s Black Hat USA 2015 conference.
The duo previewed their Black Hat talk in a just-published Wired article, in which journalist Andy Greenberg recounts how the hackers wirelessly took control of a Jeep he was driving – from a location 10 miles away.
According to Greenberg’s report, Miller and Valasek were able to control the Jeep’s brakes and accelerator, as well as other less-essential components like radio, horn and windshield wipers.
They did so by exploiting the Jeep’s entertainment system, called Uconnect, through a cellular network.
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