Eight months ago I published my concerns about how autonomous vehicles could be weaponized at scale via cyber-attack. (For those who missed it, here’s the gist: Due to the all-or-nothing nature of certain classes of cyber-attack, self-driving cars and other autonomous systems can be utilized by hostile actors to create a coordinated mass attack.) It’s time for an update.
At a closed-door Q&A session at the software hacking conference DEF CON, Elon Musk said that a fleetwide attack was Tesla’s “nightmare scenario” and announced that they were going to open-source their security modules so that automakers could work together to secure a safe self-driving future. (He later announced the security open source initiative on Twitter.) Musk’s announcement is a great start, and I’m encouraged, since an open source initiative is the single most important step to securing autonomous vehicles. But there have been other developments as well.
