Canadian Cherokees Safe From Hacks
Recently, there has been a video published from wired.com where Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have developed a tool that can hijack a Jeep over the internet. The writer from wired.com, goes out in the vehicle for a drive while they hack into his 2014 Jeep Cherokee and essentially take it over. Cutting brakes, turning off the vehicle and so on.
While obviously at surface level this is a huge problem that could lead to some serious consequences and tragedies for a bunch of auto manufacturers, there is a fallout or two to the story and we are going to address them here.
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Canadian Chrysler vehicles don’t have internet connection:
The uConnect system currently only has internet access in American vehicle systems. You will notice in the video the Uapps button on the home screen of the uconnect system allows owners to access the internet and applications for their Cherokees (and other Chrysler vehicles). The Canadian version of the uconnect system does not currently offer this feature in any of its vehicles. Therefore no internet connection, no hack.
Key information is not available.
The two hackers were supplied with a key piece of information that is not easily accessible. See Jalopnik article
Chrysler has made a patch and closed the hole.
As quoted from Jalopnik “Miller and Valasek aren’t supercriminals, so they’ve shared their findings with Chrysler before they published anything, giving Chrysler the chance to produce a patch to close this hole, which, if you have such a Uconnect-enabled system, you can download and install here via USB.” You can come into Bay King Chrysler or your local Chrysler dealership and get this update performed for you by our factory trained technicians.
One Big Take Away
The big item to discuss and take away from this story is that hacking into a vehicle via the internet is a real problem. It is also a problem that every single auto manufacturer is on the hook to ensure privacy and security is the utmost priority when developing new technologies. NHTSA is working on cyber security in vehicles and has released a document outlining their efforts. “We’re not just aware of these threats, we’re working to defeat them,” Rosekind said. “We want Americans to know that we’re on it.”