Vehicle Automation Susceptible to DoS Attacks

Self driving cars are pretty darn cool, but so are cybersecurity attacks against them. Like stopping them in their tracks with a laser pointer. No kidding!

Security researcher, Dr. Jonathan Petit, (English version of little john… lol) points out the vulnerability with his detailed explanation here. It’s a very detailed explanation.

Jonathan wrote in a paper, which he will present at Black Hat Europe, that he recorded the pulses emitted by objects with a commercial lidar (light detection and ranging) system that self-driving cars use to detect objects.

By beaming the pulses back at a lidar on a self-driving car with a laser pointer, he could force the car into slowing down or stopping to avoid hitting phantom objects.