Forget crowbars and hotwiring – the only equipment that a modern day car thief needs to take off in your vehicle is an iPad, according to a new report by Senator Edward Markey. The Massachusetts politician found that almost all cars on the market today are vulnerable to “hacking or privacy intrusions.” Top car manufacturers including General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen Audi and Volvo, found that their protection of potentially sensitive technology was “alarmingly inconsistent and incomplete.”
According to Markey, nearly 100% of cars on the market today include wireless technologies that could be vulnerable to hacking. “It raises questions of safety, it raises questions of privacy, because no longer do you need a crowbar in order to break into a car, now you can do it with an iPad,” Markey said Monday (February 9) on CBS’ This Morning.
Markey is now calling on the National Highway Safety Agency and the Federal Trade Commission to create a new set of guidelines that would protect vehicles with wireless access. He said individuals could, and should complain to the government to call for more protections against data collection.“We now need a rating system for security, for safety, for that vehicle from it being hacked by an outsider that could cause an accident, cause real danger to a family,” he said. Most cars include some wireless entry points to on-board computers, such as Bluetooth, internet access, wi-fi, keyless entry, anti-theft systems, cellular-telematics remote start, navigation systems and tire pressure monitoring. In fact, only three car manufacturers still have models without wireless entry, and the number of those models is declining quickly. “Americans are basically driving around in computers,” Markey said.