Chrysler and Nissan are reviewing a report by well-known cyber security experts that rates their vehicles among the three "most hackable" vehicles on the market.
Computer security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek determined in a report, set to be released this week, that the most hackable models out of 20 reviewed included Chrysler Group's 2014 Jeep Cherokee, Nissan Motor's 2014 Infiniti Q50, and General Motor's 2015 Cadillac Escalade.
Researchers will discuss their findings later today (Aug. 6) at the Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, where thousands are expected to gather to learn about emerging security threats.
"Chrysler Group will endeavor to verify these claims and, if warranted, we will remediate them," said company spokesman Eric Mayne, according to Reuters.
Miller is a security engineer for Twitter, and Valasek is director of vehicle security research at the consulting firm IOActive. The said that they assessed car safety based on the potential for remote attacks.
They didn't test the vehicles themselves, rather they reviewed important criteria, like the number of remote access technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, that could allow hackers to gain control of systems to manipulate and cause physical damage to the vehicle, the researchers said.
One model from Fiat SpA's Chrysler Group made the list of the three "least hackable" vehicles, according to Reuters.
The list includes: Fiat's 2014 Dodge Viper, Volkswagen AG's 2014 Audi A8 and Honda Motor Corp's 2014 Accord.
The researchers said that since they have not actually attempted to hack the vehicles, the ones named "most hackable" might actually be quite secure.
They released their assessments of "hackability" in order to create what they say they believe is the first general benchmarks that consumers could use to compare cybersecurity of vehicles, according to their report.
"This doesn't mean that the most susceptible looking isn't in fact quite secure (i.e. coded very securely) or that the most secure looking isn't in fact trivially exploitable," they said in the report. "But it does provide some objective measure of the security of a large number of vehicles that wouldn't be possible to examine in detail without a massive effort," the report said.
Nissan is reviewing the findings, and claims there is "no indication" that the authors tried to exploit any cyber vulnerabilities in the Q50, according to a statement made to Reuters.
GM has not commented regarding the report yet.
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