Secured flash devices must offer solutions that protect critical system data from attacks.
Analysts estimate that more than half of all cars sold in the U.S. this year will come with internet connectivity(1), and Gartner believes more than 750,000 cars with autonomous driving capabilities will roll off manufacturing lines by 2023(2). As more vehicles become connected and go autonomous, the possibility of bad actors taking control of cars on the road is very real, and likely to become of increasing concern. In 2015, hackers famously took control of an SUV through its infotainment system, first interfering with audio and climate controls, and then bringing the car to a stop in traffic on a busy St. Louis highway. The hackers then proved they could go beyond these tactics by stopping the engine and disabling the brakes. The point of entry for their “experiment” was through the vehicle’s internet-connected entertainment system, where the hackers rewrote the firmware and planted their code in an adjacent chip. The re-scripted chip was then able to send commands to other parts of the car through its internal CAN bus computer network.
Smart factories are vulnerable to security threats, too. Security threats are not only an issue for connected cars, though, they are also a big concern to automated factories. In recent tests conducted by Trend Micro’s Forward-Looking Threat Research Team, researchers were able to demonstrate how easily one could alter factory robot settings with the intent to control the robot, damage its parts or cause injuries to people who work near it. The research also identified tens of thousands of industrial devices residing on public IP addresses that could be hacked.
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