Hacking Your Car For Fun and Profit.

Hacking Your Car For Fun and Profit.

Hacking Your Car

Our CEO (Adriel Desautels) recently spoke at the Green Hills Software Elite Users Technology Summit regarding automotive hacking. During his presentation there were a series of reporters taking photographs, recording audio, etc.   Of all of the articles that came out, one in particular caught our eye.  We made the front page of “Elektronik iNorden” which is a Swedish technology magazine that focuses on hardware and embedded systems.
You can see the full article here but you’ll probably want to translate:
hacking a car
http://www.webbkampanj.com/ein/1011/?page=1&mode=50&noConflict=1

What really surprised us during the presentation was how many people were in disbelief about the level of risk associated with cars built after 2007.

 For example, it really isn’t all that hard to program a car to kill the driver.  In fact, its far too easy due to the overall lack of security cars today.

Think of a car as an IT Infrastructure.  All of the servers in the infrastructure are critical systems that control things like breaks, seat belts, door locks, engine timing, airbags, lights, the radio, the dashboard display, etc.  Instead of these systems being plugged into a switched network they are plugged into a hub network lacking any segmentation with no security to speak of.  The only real difference between the car network and your business network is that the car doesn’t have an Internet connection.
Enter the Chevrolet Volt, the first car to have its own IP address. Granted we don’t yet know how the Volt’s IP address will be protected.  We don’t know if each car will have a public IP address or if the cars will be connected to a private network controlled by Chevy (or someone else).  What we do know is that the car will be able to reach out to the Internet and so it will be vulnerable to client side attacks.

So what happens if someone is able to attack the car?

Realistically if someone is able to hack into the car then they will be able to take full control over almost any component of the car.  They can do anything from apply the brakes, accelerate the car, prevent the brakes from applying, kill (literally destroy) the engine, apply the breaks to one side of the car, lock the doors, pretension the seat belts, etc. For those of you that think this is Science Fiction, it isn’t.  Here’s one of many research papers that demonstrates the risks.

Why is this possible?

This is possible because people adopt technology too quickly and don’t stop to think about the risks but instead are blinded by the continence that it introduces.  We see this in all industries not just automotive. IT managers, CIO’s, CSO’s, CEO’s, etc. are always purchasing and deploying new technologies without really evaluating the risks.  In fact just recently we had a client purchase a “secure email gateway” technology… it wasn’t too secure.  We were able to hack it and access every email on the system because it relied on outdated third party software.
Certainly another component that adds to this is that most software developers write vulnerable and buggy code (sorry guys but its true).  Their code isn’t written to be secure, its written to do a specific thing like handle network traffic, beep your horn, send emails, whatever.  Poor code + a lack of security awareness == high risks.
So what can you do ?
Before you decide to adopt new technology make sure that you understand the benefits and the risks associated with the adoption.  If you’re not technical enough (most people aren’t) to do a low-level security evaluation then hire someone (a security researcher) to do it for you.  If you don’t then you could very well be putting yourselves and your customers at serious risk.

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Karen Huggins

Chief Financial, HR and Admin Officer
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Karen joined the Netragard team in 2017 and oversees Netragard’s financial, human resources as well as administration functions. She also provides project management support to the operations and overall strategy of Netragard.
 
Prior to joining Netragard, she worked at RBC Investor Services Bank in Luxembourg in the role of Financial Advisor to the Global CIO of Investor Services, as well as several years managing the Financial Risk team to develop and implement new processes in line with regulatory requirements around their supplier services/cost and to minimize the residual risk to the organization.
 
With over 20 years of experience in finance with global organizations, she brings new perspective that will help the organization become more efficient as a team. She received her Bachelor of Finance from The Florida State University in the US and her Master of Business Administration at ESSEC Business School in Paris, France.

Philippe Caturegli

Chief Hacking Officer
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Philippe has over 20 years of experience in information security. Prior to joining Netragard, Philippe was a Senior Manager within the Information & Technology Risk practice at Deloitte Luxembourg where he led a team in charge of Security & Privacy engagements.

Philippe has over 10 years of experience in the banking and financial sector that includes security assessment of large and complex infrastructures and penetration testing of data & voice networks, operating systems, middleware and web applications in Europe, US and Middle East.

Previously, Philippe held roles within the information system security department of a global pharmaceutical company in London. While working with a heterogeneous network of over 100,000 users across the world and strict regulatory requirements, Philippe gained hands-on experience with various security technologies (VPN, Network and Application Firewalls, IDS, IPS, Host Intrusion Prevention, etc.)

Philippe actively participates in the Information Security community. He has discovered and published several security vulnerabilities in leading products such as Cisco, Symantec and Hewlett-Packard.

He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), PCI Qualified Security Assessors (PCI-QSA), OSSTMM Professional Security Analyst (OPSA), OSSTMM Professional Security Tester (OPST), Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)and Associate Member of the Business Continuity Institute (AMBCI).

Adriel Desautels

Chief Technology Officer
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Adriel T. Desautels, has over 20 years of professional experience in information security. In 1998, Adriel founded Secure Network Operations, Inc. which was home to the SNOsoft Research Team. SNOsoft gained worldwide recognition for its vulnerability research work which played a pivotal role in helping to establish today’s best practices for responsible disclosure. While running SNOsoft, Adriel created the zeroday Exploit Acquisition Program (“EAP”), which was transferred to, and continued to operate under Netragard.
 
In 2006, Adriel founded Netragard on the premise of delivering high-quality Realistic Threat Penetration Testing services, known today as Red Teaming. Adriel continues to act as a primary architect behind Netragard’s services, created and manages Netragard’s 0-day Exploit Acquisition Program and continues to be an advocate for ethical 0-day research, use and sales.
 
Adriel is frequently interviewed as a subject matter expert by media outlets that include, Forbes, The Economist, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, and The Register. Adriel is often an invited keynote or panelist at events such as Blackhat USA, InfoSec World, VICELAND Cyberwar, BSides, and NAW Billion Dollar CIO Roundtable.