Hackers remotely kill a Jeep on the highway

(L-R) Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek

We continue to integrate computer technology into cars in hopes of making them more efficient, more autonomous while we’re on the road, but progress isn’t always a good thing. It seems the smarter the car is, the easier it is for a hacker to completely shut that car down in the middle of the road. No, we aren’t kidding on this.

A pair of veteran cyber security researchers have shown they can use the internet to turn off a car's engine as it drives, stirring the debate about the safety of increasingly connected cars. To drive their point home a 2014 Jeep Cherokee was purposely shut down by hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek.

Miller and Valasek used a feature in the Fiat Chrysler telematics system, Uconnect, to break into a car being driven on the highway. In a controlled test, they turned on the Jeep Cherokee's radio before rewriting the code embedded in the entertainment system hardware to issue commands through the internal network to steering, brakes and the engine.

These hackers have tested their full set of physical hacks on a Jeep Cherokee, though they believe that most of their attacks could be tweaked to work on any Chrysler vehicle with the vulnerable Uconnect head unit. 

They are yet to try to remotely hack into other makes and models of cars.

This smart car security test has raised many eyebrows and left people wondering - how good is a smart car if it can be killed so easily?