Posted on 03/04/2019 11:21:12 AM PST by ETL
As automated cars become more commonplace, it is increasingly likely that internet-connected vehicles could be simultaneously disabled. Currently, regulators tend to focus on preventing individual incidents, like the pedestrian who was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber in Arizona last year. However, they fall short of addressing the effects of a large-scale hack in an urban setting.
This week at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston, Skanda Vivek will present his research on the cyber-physical risks of hacked internet-connected vehicles. He will also participate in a press conference describing the work. Information for logging on to watch and ask questions remotely is included at the end of this news release.
Vivek and his team found that even a small-scale hack, affecting only 10 percent of vehicles in Manhattan, could cause citywide gridlock and hinder emergency services. Based on these findings the team also developed a risk-mitigation strategy to prevent mass urban disruption from a few compromised vehicles.
Vivek, a postdoctoral researcher in the Peter Yunker lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, used agent-based simulations to investigate how hacks could impact traffic flow in New York. He and his team, including Yunker, graduate student David Yanni and Jesse Silverberg, founder of Multiscale Systems Inc., ultimately discovered that by using percolation theory, a mathematical approach based on the statistical analysis of networks, they could quantify how these scenarios would play out in New York City in real time.
Moreover, their analysis helped the team develop a risk-mitigation strategy: using multiple networks for connected vehicles to decrease the number of cars that could be compromised in a single intrusion. "If no more than, say, 5 percent of connected vehicles were compartmentalized to the same network or utilized the same network protocols, the chance of citywide fragmentation would be low," Vivek said. "Therefore, a hacker with the intention of causing large-scale disruption faced with this compartmentalized multi-network architecture would be required to execute multiple simultaneous intrusions, which increases the difficulty of such an attack and makes it less likely to occur."
Stressing the urgency of this issue, Vivek commented that "compromised vehicles are unlike compromised data. Collisions caused by compromised vehicles present physical danger to the vehicle's occupants, and these disturbances would potentially have broad implications for overall traffic flow." Although there's been public scrutiny on individual collisions, this work is needed because the "likely impacts of a large-scale hack on traffic flow have yet to be quantified," Vivek said.
Speaking to the inevitability of more autonomous systems on the road, "Connected cars are the future," Vivek said. "They hold tremendous potential for positive impact economically, environmentally, and, for former drivers no longer frustrated by congested commutes, psychologically. Our work is not in opposition to the future of connected cars. Rather, the novelty of our work lies in identifying and quantifying the underlying cyber-physical risks when multiple connected vehicles are compromised. By shining a light on these technologies at an early stage, we hope we can help prevent worst-case-scenarios."
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How bad could it be?
Imagine what would happen of all of the lights were turned red at the same time. Now imagine all of them turned green.
Nature’s ‘reprogramming’ of idiots with cell phones does that, but it takes too long and is inconsistent. Also, there is the undue stress on the poor motorist who kills one of the dumbasses. (you can tell I have no sympathy for someone turned into a grease spot for crossing a street while talking on a phone)
As for hacking of self-driving vehicles? Am I the only one who thinks there won’t be some enterprising hacker out there who figures out a way to give his vehicle right of way and increase the speed at which it travels?
A few months back there was an article about self driving freight trucks. Imagine, a 100,000 lb big rig being hacked and smacking into a school.
This stuff is serious. Hacking a computer we lose information. Hacking vehicles we lose lives.
“First we need to “reprogram” the idiots that cross the street while playing with their smartphones..”
In both the programmed idiot and the vehicle human thinking is bypassed. What could go wrong?
The U.S. will never have self-driving cars. You need 5G technology to operate them, and the enviros are going to stop that.
Good reason to keep autonomous vehicles autonoumous, and free from internet control.
My opinion is that self-driving cars will become mandatory, and they will be so expensive that the average person won’t be able to afford them. I see this is one more ruse to take cars away from people.
No, you do not need 5G for autonomous vehicles. The design is meant to be autonomous, without needing outside control. We need to keep it that way.
The DARPA competitions that started the autonomous vehicle movement 20 years ago, insisted on no outside control.
This week at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston, Skanda Vivek will present his research... Vivek and his team found that even a small-scale hack, affecting only 10 percent of vehicles in Manhattan, could cause citywide gridlock and hinder emergency services. Based on these findings the team also developed a risk-mitigation strategy to prevent mass urban disruption from a few compromised vehicles.
The only people who want driverless vehicles appear to be the hucksters who want to sell them, and a relative handful of Koolaid drinkers.
Or little old me for that matter.
I oppose “driverless” cars, but they will happen anyway.
Forget about hacking by nerdy kids in Romania. What about the owner who messes with the software? What if he programs it to go 80 MPH and to go through red lights? What will the government do then? Execute the owner?
How do you tell a bunch of self driving cars to turn around and take a detour. Which car goes first? How do there digital brains make the decision? How do they know that a Hill is to Icy to even start to climb it. There are many such situations that one could think of.
1. In order to operate safely they will have large operational constraints (i.e., they'll move slower, require wider gaps in traffic, etc.) that will make them less attractive than conventional vehicles.
2. They will be prohibitively expensive.
3. The combination of #1 and #2 means they will appeal to such a narrow group of prospective buyers that nobody will want to mass-produce them for a general consumer market.
I think a networked version of “rock paper scissors” might be utlilised in those situations.
Yes, a self driving gas tanker. Just think of the fun a terrorist could have. There would be no defense against it.
Well, yes there could be. Just put up signs similar to “Gun Free Zone”, such as “No Driverless Trucks Allowed”. That should cure the potential problem.
An early Peter Weir film
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