Miller & Valasek: Security Stakes Higher for Autonomous Vehicles
No '80s-era Adidas tracksuits. No video of a hacked Jeep Cherokee slowing to a crawl from 70 mph on a highway after losing its acceleration power. No steering-wheel hijacked Jeep stuck in a muddy ditch. This time, famed car hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek came purely as defenders - rather than hackers - of automobile security.
Valasek and Miller, now both principal security architects for autonomous-vehicle manufacturer Cruise Automation, at Black Hat USA last week mapped out the key issues surrounding securing this new generation of driverless cars, based on their past three years working in the self-driving vehicle industry collectively for Uber, Didi Chuxing, and now Cruise, of which General Motors is a majority owner.
"We have a unique perspective ... we've done a bunch of car hacking," Miller said in an interview in Las Vegas prior to his and Valasek's presentation. "In the last three years, it's all been all about protecting" cars from attack, he says.
