Connected cars are awesome but they also present big opportunities for hackers to cause significant, and potentially deadly, mischief. Reuters reports that white-hat hacker Samy Kamkar says he’s figured out a way to hack into GM’s OnStar mobile app and then use it to remotely open and start GM cars.
RELATED: Hackers take over a Jeep driving down the highway at 70 mph
Essentially, Kamkar says he’s found a way to intercept communications between the OnStar RemoteLink app and the OnStar service itself, which he can then use to control some of the car’s key functions. He’ll provide more technical details on how this hack works at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas next month.
News of Kamkar’s research comes a week after Wired reported that hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek had developed code that could use a Jeep’s entertainment system to control “its dashboard functions, steering, brakes, and transmission, all from a laptop that may be across the country.” That revelation spurred Fiat Chrysler to recall 1.4 million automobiles potentially affected by the hack, an unprecedented number of cars to get recalled due to software security concerns.
You can read more about what it’s like to ride in a car that’s been hacked by clicking Wired’s full story here.
