US Congress Debates Hacker Threat To Self-Driving Cars

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Self-driving vehicles are right around the corner, but they may be faced with an issue that has so far not received much attention. In March, during a hearing of the US Senate Commerce Committee, concerns were raised about the possibility of hackers attacking autonomous cars, and thus endangering lives and crippling the economy.

“Imagine what would happen to autonomous vehicles to get hacked while they’re out on the road – one small defect could end up in a massive safety crisis,” said Senator Bill Nelson.

While the concern is valid, it seem to not have phased Google’s representative at the hearing, who pointed to the company’s long and successful track record of dealing with malicious hackers.

“We have hundreds of people dedicated to cybersecurity,” said Google’s lead engineer in the autonomous car programme, Chris Urmson. “What we’ve learned through that is it’s a very dynamic space and it’s important to be able to adapt,” he added.

One of the main issues discussed at the meeting was the level of government involvement in setting safety standards for self-driving vehicles, including for the hacker threat.

Democratic Senator Ed Markey had this to say on the matter: “Clearly hackers are going to have the ability to break into these vehicles, and so the kinds of protections you build in can be voluntary – but if 10 companies do it and 10 don’t, then those 10 are going to be identified by the hackers as the ones they’re going to be playing games with out on the highways.”

“I just think we need minimal standards that every company is going to meet,” he added.