General Motors Wants To Stomp Out Smart Car Bugs

General Motors (GM), which owns Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick among others, will allow hackers to report vulnerabilities in its vehicles without the threat of being charged by the company as part of its HackerOne program.

Anyone who makes a submission to the programme will have to provide a detailed summary of the vulnerability, including the target, steps, tools, and artefacts used during discovery, which GM says will allow it to reproduce the situation and create a fix.

Applicants also have to promise not to harm or violate the privacy of GM or its customers or breach criminal law.

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The launch of GM’s program follows growing security concerns surrounding smart vehicles.

Last October, researchers at software security company Security Innovation reported that they were able to hack the radar scanner built in to some smart vehicles using a homemade tool made up of components costing less than £50, making it think that obstacles or pedestrians are in the road and possibly sending it swerving without warning as it looks to try and avoid a collision.

Back in February 2015, BMW also confirmed it had patched a serious security flaw that could have allowed hackers to seize control of some of its cars’ systems.

The vulnerability, which could have allowed hackers to the open doors of 2.2 million Rolls-Royce, Mini and BMW vehicles, also gave access to the onboard vehicle computer system, which manages everything from engines and brakes to air conditioning.

To combat these threats, back in October, Intel announced the launch of a new security board which will look to ensure that smart vehicles remain safe from the threat of hackers.

The Automotive Security Review Board (ASRB) will look to combine some of the leading minds in the field of connected security to carry out ongoing tests and audits that will create best practices and design recommendations for smart car security systems.

Recent predictions from Gartner say that by 2020, the number of connected passenger vehicles on the road in use will be about 150 million, 60 percent to 75 percent of them of which be capable of consuming, creating and sharing Web-based data.

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