Chrysler, Nissan looking into claim that their cars are industry's most hackable

Sun, 10 Aug 2014

A pair of cyber security experts have awarded the ignominious title of most hackable vehicles on American roads to the 2014 Jeep Cherokee, 2014 Infiniti Q50 and 2015 Cadillac Escalade.

Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek are set to release a report at the Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, Automotive News reports. The two men found the Jeep, Caddy and Q50 were easiest to hack based not on actual tests with the vehicles, but a detailed analysis of systems like Bluetooth and wireless internet access – basically, anything that'd allow a hacker to remotely gain access to the vehicle's systems.

Considering this lack of hands-on testing, the pair acknowledge that "most hackable" could be a relative term – they point out that the vehicles may actually be quite secure.

"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," the report reads, according to AN. "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 parent companies of Jeep and Infiniti, Chrysler and Nissan, have moved against the claims. "Chrysler Group will endeavor to verify these claims and, if warranted, we will remediate them," company spokesman Eric Mayne told AN.

Nissan, meanwhile, said there was "no indication" that the Q50's systems were breached, although it was reviewing Miller and Valasek's findings.

As for the least hackable vehicles, Miller and Valasek pointed to the Audi A8 and Honda Accord, as well as Chrysler's own Dodge Viper.

By Brandon Turkus