Researchers hack into driverless car system, take control of vehicle.

• Position: Homeland Security News

* A group of Virginia-based researchers funded by the Defense Department found that it is relatively easy to remotely hack into a driverless car's control system, but said hardening against such an attack can be inexpensive

Two Charlottesville-based companies teamed up with the University of Virginia and the Defense Department to find a solution to combat cyber attacks on critical functions such as braking and accelerating in driverless cars.

Mission Secure Inc. (MSi), a cyber defense solutions provider, and Perrone Robotics Inc., a software developer for autonomous vehicles, announced in March the successful completion of a pilot project testing the capability of MSi's Secure Sentinel platform. The platform consists of two parts: a hardware embedded with the physical system and a cloud-based software.

"We successfully demonstrated [that], yes, you can easily attack braking and acceleration and other automated features added to cars, but you can also protect against them in real time," said David Drescher, CEO of Mission Secure.

The team had similar testing success on unmanned aerial systems in December. Many of the lessons learned in the aerial study, especially in regard to GPS navigation, were applied to the tests on autonomous ground vehicles, said Drescher.

The product is patent-pending and available to early adopters in the U.S. military, energy and transportation industries, according to Mission Secure's website.

'There's a very strong interest in several of the branches of the military applying this to a variety of things from various autonomous air vehicles to ships and weapon systems," said Drescher.

The project used an assessment methodology developed by the University of Virginia's Department of Systems and Information Engineering in cooperation with the Defense Department. The system identifies cyber attacks that are easily executed and affect the car's key functions.

"The protections [we developed] are real time," said Dan Park, chief technology officer and co-founder of Mission

Secure. "Where once there is a threat perceived, the system will engage, and it will be able to engage faster than a human."

The University of Virginia...