The notion that bad people can — or would — electronically hack vehicles and cause havoc and destruction is not easy for an industry built on optimism.
But we recently got a poke in our collective cybersecurity innocence when a cache of Democratic National Committee emails was hacked into and published.
The topic was discussed here Wednesday, just as it was at last month’s Billington Global Automotive Cybersecurity Summit in Detroit.
At that summit, General Motors CEO Mary Barra warned that growing vehicle complexity “opens up opportunities for those who want to do harm through cyber-attacks.”
In 2000, cars typically had about 1 million lines of code, Barra said. “Today, an average car has more than 100 million lines of code, and it won’t be long before it’s 200 million.”
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said the auto industry must set a higher bar.
“If someone takes your money out of your bank account, that’s a bad thing,” Peters said. “But if someone crashes your car into a wall, that’s catastrophic. If that happens, all of the incredible things that are happening with this industry and this technology will come to a halt pretty quick.”
