Drive a dumb car but buy Tesla stocks
After two years of having their research suppressed by Volkswagen and a UK court, Flavio Garcia, Roel Verdult and Baris Ege were finally able to present their research (pdf) at USENIX. The researcher paper details “how the cryptography and authentication protocol used in the Megamos Crypto transponder can be targeted by malicious hackers looking to steal luxury vehicles.”
Also at USENIX, University of California at San Diego researchers revealed (pdf) how to hack a Corvette’s brakes by sending text messages to a OBD2 dongle known as a telematics control unit (TCUs); it’s not only Corvette’s though as security researchers told Wired that the same technique could be used to “wirelessly hack into any of thousands of vehicles through a tiny commercial device: A 2-inch-square gadget that’s designed to be plugged into cars’ and trucks’ dashboards and used by insurance firms and trucking fleets to monitor vehicles’ location, speed and efficiency.”
You might recall that at the start of this year, Progressive Insurance Snapshot devices were said to be riddled with security flaws which attackers could exploit to hack vehicles.
So far in the summer of car hacking, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely attacked and sent a Jeep into a ditch before urging you to patch your Chrysler, Ram, Durango or Jeep; Chrysler then recalled 1.4 million vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Harman Kardon and there was a class action lawsuit filed against Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Harman International.
Even Senators started pushing SPY Car Act legislation and a “cyber dashboard.”
Samy Kamkar came out with “Drive It Like You Hacked It: New Attacks and Tools to Wirelessly Steal Cars;” his $32 RollJam can break into most garages and cars. Kamkar said, “If you’re using a remote to unlock your vehicle, then you’re vulnerable.” After Kamkar’s OwnStar, General Motors had to patch its OnStar RemoteLink app which can locate, unlock and remotely start GM vehicles.
Tesla was quick to patch its Model S after security researchers hacked the car’s software and presented “How to Hack a Tesla Model S.”
After Miller and Valasek proved that vehicles can be remotely attacked in real life and not just the movies, I thought they made a great case for going old school and steering clear of ‘smart’ and ‘connected’ vehicles. Now Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky also suggested “keeping it simple.” Basically, he votes for driving a “dumb” car.
“The more microprocessors a car has, the greater the attack surface,” Bershidsky wrote on BloombergView before adding that The Tesla Model S has 62 processors, about as many as top-flight BMWs, Mercedes, Audis and Lexuses do.” He suggested:
Large-scale ransomware attacks on cars
As if car hacking scenarios aren’t scary enough, Andy Rowland, Head of Customer Innovation, Energy, Resources and Automotive at BT, warned about how multiple-vehicle hacking scenarios could affect drivers even if they don’t drive the most-currently-hacked-car in the news. He wants us to think bigger as in infections starting at auto dealerships or manufacturing plants. Rowland wrote:
Tesla stocks could double
Whether you are in the market for a new shiny car with all the connectivity bells and whistles or if you are sticking with a “dumb” car, Morgan Stanley is advising for you to buy Tesla stock. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas believes Tesla is an overweight stock, meaning he believes it is a better value for the money than others. Bloomberg reported that Jonas “increased the price target for Tesla to $465 from $280 (the stock is currently at about $243). The key reason behind this is what he calls ‘Tesla Mobility, an app-based, on-demand mobility service’.”
Tesla, according to Morgan Stanley, has the five critical attributes to be a high-performing shared autonomy firm: vehicle design and engineering, leadership in connected car, autonomous cars and software expertise, battery/electric powertrain expertise and proprietary infrastructure network. Yet it seems like the biggest reason Jonas is hot for Tesla stock is because of a non-answer answer he got when interviewing Elon Musk.
Uber had previously said it would buy all of Tesla’s autonomous cars if the vehicles were ready by 2020, but Jonas asked:
After Musk replied with, “I don't think I should answer,” Jonas said, “Sometimes you can tell more from the non-answer than from the answer.”