Automotive

The French Disconnection: Radio Gun Stops Smart Cars In Their Tracks

You could call it “The Death of the Car Chase.” According to the BBC, a UK company, E2V is demonstrating the RF Safe-Stop, a 350 KG (770 lb) device that can shoot RF (radio frequency) pulses at moving vehicles,  “confusing” the vehicle’s electronic systems and causing its engine to shut off, stranding both vehicle and driver. E2V’s Safe-Stop product is intended for use as a non-lethal weapon for the military and law enforcement and is marketed as a tool for “checkpoint enhancement,” “convoy protection” and “vehicle immobilisation” (sp). According to this BBC report, the device acts like a small radar transmitter, directing a beam of radio pulses (identified elsewhere as L and S-Band RF pulses) that saturate the wiring that connects the vehicles on board systems. Those pulses confuse the engine control unit and cause it to reset, stopping the vehicle. Safe-Stop sends a continuous stream of pulses to keep the ECU confused […]

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Verizon: New Cloud Encryption Service Will Secure IoT Devices

Identity is one of the biggest challenges facing companies that are deploying products for the “Internet of Things,” as well as traditional enterprises that find IoT technologies of all types knocking at the door. The question, in short, is “how do I know that this device is legitimate, and ties back to an identity that I trust with access to my network resources and data? Of course, identity management has always been an aching problem in the enterprise space. The problem with the IoT is scale – given the sheer size of the IoT (30 billion connected devices by 2020), you can add a few “zeros” onto the number of devices that could, potentially, be seeking access to your network at any time. [Related read: Identity Management’s Next Frontier: The Interstate] It makes sense that, in a distributed environment like that, the cloud may be the best place to address […]

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At FTC Forum, Experts Wonder: Is Privacy Passé?

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) used a one-day workshop to highlight security and privacy issues prompted by so-called “Internet of Things.” But attendees at the event may have walked away with a more ambiguous message, as prominent technologists and industry representatives questioned whether conventional notions of privacy had much relevance in a world populated by billions of Internet-connected devices. “I don’t feel like privacy is dead,” keynote speaker Vint Cerf, a Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, told an audience at the FTC workshop. “I do feel like privacy will be increasingly difficult for us to achieve,” Cerf warned. And Cerf wasn’t alone in wondering whether that might not be such a bad thing – or even that unusual. “Is privacy an anomaly?” Cerf wondered aloud, recalling his experience living in a small, German town where the “postmaster knew what everyone was doing.” Our modern concept of being ‘alone […]

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Supply Chain Transparency Doesn’t Extend To Security

We live in an ever-more unstable world in which massive disruptions, whether natural or man-made, are a frequent occurrence. Companies that make everything from aircraft to mobile phones to cappuccino need to be nimble – sidestepping global calamities that might idle assembly lines or leave customers without their morning cup of coffee.  As in other areas, the benefits of technology advancements like cheap, cloud based computing, remote sensors and mobility are transforming the way that companies manage their vast, global network of suppliers. These days, supply chain transparency is all the rage – allowing companies to share information seamlessly and in realtime with their downstream business partners and suppliers. Firms like the start-ups Sourcemap, and LlamaSoft are offering “supply chain visualization” technology that leverages a familiar formula these days: mobility, social networking, crowd-sourced intelligence, and “Big Data” analytics. [There’s more to read about supply chain security on The Security Ledger.]  However, as […]

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Identity Management’s Next Frontier: The Interstate

Factory-installed and even aftermarket identity management applications may soon be standard components on automobiles, as the federal government looks for ways to leverage automation and collision avoidance technology to make the country’s highways and roadways safer.   That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which finds that vehicle to vehicle communications are poised to take off, but that significant security and privacy challenges must first be met, identity management top among them. The report, GAO 14-13 (PDF available here) takes the measure of what the GAO calls “Intelligent Transportation Systems,” including vehicle-to-vehicle (or V2V) technology. The GAO found that V2V technology that allows automobiles to communicate with each other in ways that can prevent accidents has advanced considerably in recent years. Automakers, working with the Department of Transportation, are testing the technology in real-world scenarios. However, the deployment of V2V technologies faces a number […]

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