Everyone knows that a car with an internet connection is at a huge risk of hacking. Over the years, it has been found that an internet connection is necessary to hack such a car, but a Chinese hacker thinks differently.
A Chinese-born hacker who goes by the nickname Daishen, which means “stupid god,” has claimed he can hack cars, even if they’re not connected to the Internet. He told Chinese website Leiphone that he can hack not-so-smart cars, such as the Volkswagen TOUREG, Audi A6, Audi A7, and probably many more.
Daishen says he can access the car's GPS and stereo systems by exploiting weaknesses in the car's security layers. Daishen gave the example of a specific unspecified car model in which the vehicle's system runs an authentication check to prevent unauthorized access, but stores the result of that check in plain text rather than encrypted, allowing hackers to change the result from false to true and the system to allow access. He also said that most of the above cars had a poorly guarded and easy admin password that was intended for use by engineers during the car's manufacturing process. However, more often than not, car manufacturers simply forget these default admin credentials, making it easy for hackers to exploit them.
Daishen says the hacking method can't be done remotely and that it would require physical access to the car to break in, at least once. And once it has access, further communication with the system could be done in a variety of ways – such as a Bluetooth connection, for example.
He also notes that while this type of hack does not give the hacker full control of the car, in the wrong hands, it can be used to track the car owner in real time via the car's GPS navigation and use the data to rob or blackmail.
The good news is that Daishen is a whitehat hacker who does security for the public good. He says he has already sent information about the security holes to vehicle manufacturers. However, the fact is that dumb cars haven't been patched enough times, and that leaves many cars vulnerable to attacks.
