Nowadays you don’t need a crowbar to break into a car. All you need is a laptop and some clever software. The effect will be the same – or worse, depending on how evil the hacker is feeling.
While it is tempting to use unseemly levity when it comes to hacking – such as the intriguing idea of Google Glass being used to enhance acitivities of an, eh hem, adult nature, or the less appealing idea of being hijacked and taken into web sites awash with malware. Or even the idea of Google Glass going dark as you are bouncing off people while picking up your email and the screech of tyres etc.
Now, though, the connected car will bring with it similar hacking opportunities. The vision of entertaining the kids with movies, being told where the nearest ice cream stall is, the spouse doing the shopping, the car sending emails to the garage and you surfing the web while apparently driving is scary enough.
Imagine the formation of cars sweeping efficiently into town, a ballet of steel and chrome, weaving in perfect computer generated orchestration across town and into the most efficient parking area. Perfect.
And then someone, somewhere presses a button and random cars come to a halt. From order will come chaos.
Fantasy? No – reality.
As the sages will tell us, the only truly safe system is one that is completely unconnected. Kind of like cars of the present.
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