Japan Jumps into Vehicle Anti-Hacking Effort

Developers in Japan are working on ways to defend tomorrow’s cars against hacking attacks that could threaten occupant safety, The Nikkei reports.

Panasonic Corp., for one, has developed a device that used the popular controller access network protocol to search for and cancel rogue signals between a car’s electronic control units, according to the Tokyo-based newspaper. It says Panasonic aims to commercialize the device by about 2020.

Meanwhile, researchers at Fujitsu Laboratories and Yokohama National University are perfecting technology to defend against Internet-based assaults on a car. Their system alerts the driver to an attack and filters incoming signals to permit only legitimate commands to get through to the vehicle’s operating system.

Another team at Mitsubishi Electric and Ritsumeikan University is working on security tools that can prevent hackers from stealing so-called digital keys used to read a car’s encrypted command signals.

The Nikkei points out that cars already are designed to detect and block internally generated errant signals from disrupting the behavior of safety-related systems. Defending against external threats poses a far broader challenge. The newspaper says encryption techniques used by the telecom industry cannot be easily adapted for automotive use.