If the day of controlling a car from your mobile phone is tomorrow, then the day of hacking the same car with mobile phone is tomorrow afternoon. Security researchers have used the same tech as car manufacturers use to come up with a loop hole. All it took is 2 hours to hack it.
Called as ‘war texting’ derived from the infamous ‘war driving’ or stealing Internet from open WiFi networks around the town by sitting in a car. War texting follows the same process of stealing cars by stealing wireless data sent to the car.
War texting is technically complex. First of all, the researchers have to identify cars that are using these mobile applications. Then they have to find a way to connect with them. With these mobile car apps, the phone connects to a server that then sends secret numerical keys to the car in order to authenticate itself, but the iSec researchers figured out ways to get around this by looking at the messages sent between the server and the car over the mobile network, Bailey said in an interview. “We reverse-engineer the protocol and then we build our own tools to use that protocol to contact that system,” he said. (Source)
Apple appstore would never approve a war texting app but there are enough enthusiasts who actually jailbreak their phones. For Android phones it is just a matter of installing an apk. Anyway, installing a rogue app on a smartphone isn’t the hardest part. War texting is the hardest part. Now that it’s cracked through, all it needs is a developer to come up with an app and wreak havoc.
The ‘usefulness’ of the app could range from stealing a car or turning off the engine of someone else’s car in the middle of a highway to stealing a date from a dude.
Incredible apps and endless possibilities.
