How To Take Control of a Car's Electronics, Cheap

mspohr writes with this excerpt from The Register: "Spanish hackers have been showing off their latest car-hacking creation; a circuit board using untraceable, off-the-shelf parts worth $20 that can give wireless access to the car's controls while it's on the road. The device, which will be shown off at next month's Black Hat Asia hacking conference, uses the Controller Area Network (CAN) ports car manufacturers build into their engines for computer-system checks. Once assembled, the smartphone-sized device can be plugged in under some vehicles, or inside the bonnet of other models, and give the hackers remote access to control systems. 'A car is a mini network,' security researcher Alberto Garcia Illera told Forbes. 'And right now there's no security implemented.'"

Physical Access

[Pcgeek21]

This issue surrounds physical access to the vehicle, at which point no amount of security is going to be able to protect it (it will only make it more difficult to do). Adding security would make it significantly more difficult for mechanics and enthusiasts to work with their vehicles. My vote is towards adding a notification light on the dash board for when a device is connected to the vehicle's computer (that cannot be turned off by the computer [e.g. controlled by an auxiliary system]), which would notify the user that something is not right (if they did not connect something).