Yesterday I had my little sports car in for regular maintenance. While I was reading the paper and choking down a paper cup of nasty coffee from a machine, the mechanic came to see me. My first thought was “this can’t be good” and I felt my wallet was about to get thinned out. Quite the contrary. Apparently, there was a software upgrade that was available for my 2006 vehicle. “Already?” I laughed. He said it would be no cost. After a moments pause, I agreed. The pause was due to a brain freeze as I recalled a story. The story was from Engadget where I read a week ago about footballer David Beckhams stolen BMWs. Car thieves in Spain had pinched his SUVs by hacking the vehicles computer and then taking over the system. First unlocking the car, starting the engine and disabling the tracking device. All of this with a trusty laptop and a bluetooth card. Cars have come a long way since my first vehicle, a 79 Le Mans, which was held together with hope and duct tape. It’s a very different world where researchers have to take time to run exhaustive testing on vehicles to ensure they are immune to computer viruses.F-Secure, the Finnish security shop, performed these tests on the widely held suspicion that computer viruses could make the jump from mobile devices, such as a phone, to the onboard computer. Turned out that this was not possible at the time. In hindsight, I really should have asked for the release notes. I’d be interested to see if this hack had been patched.

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Tags: Security, Car Theft, Wireless car theft, Car virus, David Beckham, F-Secure