Researchers Seek Ways to Prevent Hacked Driverless Car Incidents in Major Cities
Per Forbes, a team of researchers from Georgia Tech and Multiscale Systems Inc. have been studying how potential hacks could trigger collisions and gridlocks in major cities across the nation — Manhattan, New York, in particular. This week, the group will present their research results in Boston at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting.
Gridlocks and collisions
The researchers used percolation theory, a mathematical approach based on statistical analysis of networks, to predict how cyber-hacks on driverless vehicles would impede New York City traffic. It turns out that hacked vehicles would compartmentalize certain portions of roads in a given area. To be specific, the team found that when 10-20 percent of vehicles were hacked during rush hour, half of the Big Apple became inaccessible.
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Further complications
The potential adoption of 5G networks in the near future could further complicate the risk that driverless cars pose in the likelihood of a city-wide hack. These vehicles would rely so heavily on sensor-driven collision-avoidance technology and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication that even a brief interruption in internet connectivity could trigger accidents and gridlock scenarios.
A potential solution
Based on the research, the team uncovered one possible fix to help prevent widespread hack incidents with driverless technology. Connected vehicles could use multiple networks instead of just one, to reduce the number of vehicles that a hacker could access. Skanda Vivek, a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, articulates how this strategy would help deter hackers because they’d “[have to] execute multiple simultaneous intrusions, which increases the difficulty of such an attack and makes it less likely to occur.”
Stay tuned for more news in the days ahead as the Georgia Tech and Multiscale Systems Inc. group continues to tweak their research and 5G connectivity draws closer to becoming a reality.
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News Source: Forbes
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