通用学术英语 翻译原文【U2text2】Highway Robbery

Highway Robbery: Car Computer Controls

Could Be Vulnerable to Hackers

As if worrying about the vulnerability of your PC and smart phone to hackers were not enough,

could your car be the next target? Maybe not today, but engineers are transforming automobiles

from a collection of mechanical devices crowded around a combustion engine to a sophisticated

network of as many as 70 computers

—

called electronic control units (ECUs). These computers

are linked to one another and to the Internet, making the car a mini mobile data center susceptible

to many of the same digital dangers

—

viruses, denial-of- service attacks, etcetera

—

that have long

plagued PCs and other networked devices.

ECUs manage supercritical, real-time systems such as steering, air bag deployment and braking as

well as less critical components including the ignition, lights and infotainment console. Software

(sometimes up to 100 million lines of code) tells these ECUs what to do and when to do it. ECUs

tend to share networks when they communicate with one another. This makes it easier to control

more networked gadgets (GPS, MP3 players and more) from the same place, such as the center of

the

steering

wheel.

The

problem

comes

when

infotainment

and

other

nonessential

components

share the same network with the brakes, steering and other safety-critical devices.

So says a group of researchers who claim that earlier this year they proved a hacker could, among

other things, conceivably use a cell phone to unlock a car's doors and start its engine remotely, so

he

or

she

could

then

get

behind

the

wheel

and

drive

away.

Stefan

Savage,

a

computer

science

professor at the University of California, San Diego, and Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant computer

science and engineering professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, inserted malicious

software

onto

a

car's

computer

system

using

its

Bluetooth

and

cell

phone

connections.

(They

decline

to

specify

which

brand

of

car.)

They

presented

their

work

in

March

at

the

National

Academies Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration.

Savage,

Kohno

and

their

colleagues

have

for

the

past

few

years

studied

cyber

attacks

against

automobile

networks.

Earlier

experiments

used

a

laptop

plugged

into

the

federally

mandated

On-Board Diagnostic

system

(OBD

–

II)

port

under

a

test

car's

dashboard

to

take

control

of

its

ECUs to (among other things) disable the brakes, selectively brake individual wheels on demand,

and stop the engine

—

all independent of the driver's actions (pdf).

This research

measures in

vehicular onboard networks,

Henniger,

a

researcher

at

Germany's

Fraunhofer

Institute

for

Secure

Information

Technology.

communication

can

be

eavesdropped,

jammed

or

relayed,

and

automobile

security

measures are necessary.

Henniger and his colleagues are working to create just that. He is a member of Europe's E-Safety