connect to chaos: gm/ibm give chevy volt its own ip address

from newelectronics.co.uk: The Chevy Volt will be the first car of its type: not because it is a hybrid electric/petrol vehicle, but because GM plans to give each one the company sells its own IP address. The Volt will have no less than 100 microcontrollers running its systems from some 10 million lines of code. This makes some hackers very excited and Adriel Desautels, president of security analysis firm Netragard, very worried. Before now, you needed physical access to reprogram the software inside a car: an 'air gap' protected vehicles from remote tampering. The Volt will have no such physical defence. Without some kind of electronic protection, Desautels sees cars such as the Volt and its likely competitors becoming 'hugely vulnerable 5000lb pieces of metal'. Desautels adds: "We are taking systems that were not meant to be exposed to the threats that my team produces and plug it into the internet. Some 14 year old kid will be able to attack your car while you're driving ... 'Black hats' are poised and waiting for this car to come out."

google developing fleet of autonomous vehicles

google cars drive themselves, in traffic
from nytimes: Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving. The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.

defcon 9/9: sex, spies & vulnerabilities

craigslist unexpectedly pulls adult services listings*
cia money behind wi-fi positioning system, or wps*
google pays $8.5m to settle buzz privacy invasion suit*
video: google creepier & more omnipresent with 'instant search'*
court ok's warrantless cell-site tracking*
nsa: US must secure the internet*
dhs cybersecurity watchdogs miss 100s of vulnerabilities on their own network*
cyber task force passes mission to cyber command*
cyber warfare: US military hackers & internet spies*
canada unveils new speed bump: optical illusion of a child*

defcon 8/26: dirty tricks & moon rocks

realtime track of x-37b: US military’s top secret x-37b shuttle 'disappeared' for 2wks, changed orbit*
flashback: military launches x-37b*
secretive mini-shuttles, dirty tricks spy sats & more*
sweden pulls wikileaks warrant*
video: scientists hack into cars' computers & control brakes, engine*
flashback: austin hacker disables more than 100 cars remotely*
missing moon rock unveiled in colorado*

video: physicist kaku talks aliens on msnbc*

defcon 8/12: cyber lies & gag orders

cyber lie exposed: power plants not connected to internet*
dhs needs to take threat of emp attack seriously, physicist warns*
google ceo: no anonymity is the future of web*
google raided by s. korea police street view probe*
appeals court rules against secret police gps tracking*
cars hacked through wireless tire sensors*
geoeye & digitalglobe get $7b from intel agency to implement next-gen sat imaging*
'john doe' who fought fbi spying freed from gag order after 6yrs*

ibm wants to control your car

ibm: the solutions company, the final solutions company...
from jalopnik: A patent application filed by IBM engineers reveals the company’s developing technology that will allow governments to shut down the engines of private automobiles via traffic signals. It’s like Skynet… only much worse. Engineers from IBM, suddenly free from the burden of making computers, are hoping to ruin the driving experience by handing over the ability to stop and start car engines over to traffic lights, railroad crossing gates and other transportation signals... The goal of the system is to lower fuel usage and optimize the movement of vehicles through intersections by controlling engine operations remotely via traffic signals. A railroad crossing could sense the vehicles in the general vicinity were going to be stuck for a while and would then cut the power to save gas. It's similar to the start/stop systems on a few modern cars but taken to perverse extremes.