Or perhaps you have the latest smart locks, the kind that
let you use your smartphone at a distance to open the front
door for a guest. Perhaps you also have Web-connected lighting
systems. Wouldn’t a would-be burglar love to unlock the
doors, turn off the lights, and disable your home security?
Now consider your car. It has or soon will have the ability
to record and report diagnostic information, remotely start
and turn on the heat when signaled by your cellphone, and
use integrated GPS, map, weather, and traffic data to select
the best route. But these capabilities also mean that hackers
can remotely flash your car’s lights, enabling them to
identify it on your street, unlock the door, start the engine,
and drive it away. Hackers might even gain control of the
car while you’re driving it, thanks to malware that infected
the car when it communicated with a computer back in
the repair shop. In February 2014, the U.S. Department of
Transportation began working on a regulatory proposal
that would require all new vehicles to be equipped with
car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication capability,
providing yet another path for reaching into automobiles
remotely.