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Hackers Can Trick Driverless Cars With A Handheld Laser
http://www.popsci.com/hackers-can-trick-lidar-used-in-autonomous-cars-with-laser-pointerIts been a bumpy road for automobile security in the last few months. Chrysler is still reeling from security gaps that hackers exploited to kill a Jeep while it drove down a highway, recalling more than 8,000 SUVs this week and patching millions more. Security experts have been taking cues from that wake-up call, and DIY car hacking devices have even emerged on the internet.
Now, a security researcher says that the complex LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system used in many driverless car prototypes can be fooled with just $60 in parts. (LiDAR relies on the same principles of radar, but instead uses lasers, making it quicker and more accurate.) The hack allows for the attacker to trick the car into thinking there are objects where there actually isntpotentially forcing the car to slow down, stop, or swerve.
I can take echoes of a fake car and put them at any location I want, Jonathan Petit of Security Innovation told IEEE Spectrum. And I can do the same with a pedestrian or a wall.
The setup consists of a small, low-power laser and a pulse generator, which Petit says could even be replaced by a Raspberry Pi, a small computer board used in DIY projects. He recorded laser pulses reflected by a commercial LiDAR system, and then simply mimicked them with the laser back at the navigation system...Petits method worked up to about 300 feet away from the car, and doesnt require great accuracy with the laser beam. He can imitate the movement of cars, pedestrians or stationary obstacles from 50 to 1000 feet away...He acknowledges that you can also use the same tools to blind a human driver, just by shining a strong laser pointer in their eyes. The hack seems more alarming, however.
A future where we rely on autonomous cars rests on a 100 percent success rate, even when we dont achieve it ourselves. To err is to be human, and thats exactly the point.
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Hackers Can Trick Driverless Cars With A Handheld Laser (Original Post)
Demeter
Sep 2015
OP
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)1. What about Porky shooting a laser gun at the driverless car.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)2. so that might also cause problems if there's something too shiny at just the right angle
to the sensor
and some people say we don't need infrastructure spending because ANY DAY NOW we'll convert most freeway lanes to echelons of fusion-powered automatic cars going 180 mph each separated by 2 feet for slipstreaming; they've been promising that for a few decades now ...