Hackers remotely stop Jeep from 10 miles away
“Though I hadn’t touched the dashboard, the vents in the Jeep Cherokee started blasting cold air at the maximum setting. Next the radio switched to the local hip hop station and began blaring Skee-lo at full volume. I spun the control knob left and hit the power button, to no avail."  In a potentially lethal exercise a journalist from Wired magazine and a couple of white-hat hackers showed conclusively that cars can be hacked, whilst driving along; and that the engine can be killed.  The hackers have found a zero-day exploit in the Jeep Cherokee's software so that they "can target Jeep Cherokees and give the attacker wireless control, via the Internet, to any of thousands of vehicles".  A couple of US Senators have started voicing their concerns over consumer protection, saying that on-board computers need to be far more sophisticated in their protection. 
In fact, automakers are thinking about their digital security more than ever before, says Josh Corman, the cofounder of I Am the Cavalry, a security industry organization devoted to protecting future Internet-of-things targets like automobiles and medical devices. Thanks to Markey's letter, and another set of questions sent to automakers by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in May, Corman says, Detroit has known for months that car security regulations are coming.

But Corman cautions that the same automakers have been more focused on competing with each other to install new Internet-connected cellular services for entertainment, navigation, and safety. (Payments for those services also provide a nice monthly revenue stream.) The result is that the companies have an incentive to add Internet-enabled features---but not to secure them from digital attacks. "They're getting worse faster than they're getting better," he says. "If it takes a year to introduce a new hackable feature, then it takes them four to five years to protect it."

Corman's group has been visiting auto industry events to push five recommendations: safer design to reduce attack points, third-party testing, internal monitoring systems, segmented architecture to limit the damage from any successful penetration, and the same Internet-enabled security software updates that PCs now receive. The last of those in particular is already catching on; Ford announced a switch to over-the-air updates in March, and BMW used wireless updates to patch a hackable security flaw in door locks in January.

Corman says carmakers need to befriend hackers who expose flaws, rather than fear or antagonize them---just as companies like Microsoft have evolved from threatening hackers with lawsuits to inviting them to security conferences and paying them “bug bounties” for disclosing security vulnerabilities. For tech companies, Corman says, “that enlightenment took 15 to 20 years.” The auto industry can't afford to take that long. “Given that my car can hurt me and my family,” he says, “I want to see that enlightenment happen in three to five years, especially since the consequences for failure are flesh and blood.”

As I drove the Jeep back toward Miller’s house from downtown St. Louis, however, the notion of car hacking hardly seemed like a threat that will wait three to five years to emerge. In fact, it seemed more like a matter of seconds; I felt the vehicle's vulnerability, the nagging possibility that Miller and Valasek could cut the puppet's strings again at any time.

The hackers holding the scissors agree. “We shut down your engine---a big rig was honking up on you because of something we did on our couch,” Miller says, as if I needed the reminder. “This is what everyone who thinks about car security has worried about for years. This is a reality.”

Update 3:30 7/24/2015: Chrysler has issued a recall for 1.4 million vehicles as a result of Miller and Valasek's research. The company has also blocked their wireless attack on Sprint's network to protect vehicles with the vulnerable software.

1Correction 10:45 7/21/2015: An earlier version of the story stated that the hacking demonstration took place on Interstate 40, when in fact it was Route 40, which coincides in St. Louis with Interstate 64.

2Correction 1:00pm 7/27/2015: An earlier version of this story referenced a Range Rover recall due to a hackable software bug that could unlock the vehicles' doors. While the software bug did lead to doors unlocking, it wasn't publicly determined to exploitable by hackers.