Pick one of the following three articles about attacks on vehicle security:

• “CONNECTED CARS: Is your internet-enabled vehicle safe from hackers?”, IOL.CO.ZA, Jun 30, 2021, https://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/connected-cars-is-your-internet-enabled-vehicle-safe-from-hackers-af650f21-d7ec-49ef-8c97-c1cb605f947d
• “Serious Concerns That AI Self-Driving Cars Cybersecurity Will Be A Hacker Leak Like An Open Sieve”, Forbes, August 25, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2021/08/25/serious-concerns-that-ai-self-driving-cars-cybersecurity-will-be-a-hacker-leak-like-an-open-sieve/?sh=5930e4c7477f
• “Highway to hack: Why we’re just at the beginning of the auto-hacking era”, ArsTechnica, August 2015, http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/highway-to-hack-why-were-just-at-the-beginning-of-the-auto-hacking-era

Answer both of the following questions:

• What are the implications of vehicle hacking for autonomous vehicles? Today’s vehicles have complex computer code and autonomous vehicles will have even more complex code. Do you think we will ever have widespread use of safe autonomous vehicles? Why or why not?
• One of the suggestions to improve vehicle security is for car manufacturers to release their code open source to allow for public scrutiny. Do you think this would help improve vehicle security? Why or why not? 

There are several implications for autonomous vehicles (AV) being hacked. First, as cars become more and more integrated with technology that connects to the Internet, it creates more holes that need to be patched to remain secure. Second, the over-the-air electronic communication capability of AV is a large risk due to the potential reach it can give hackers if compromised. Finally, electronic communications like vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) will also be vulnerabilities that need to be addressed due to potential exploitation by hackers.

With the number of potential exploits that AV has, I don’t think that AV will be completely safe for widespread use. Still, by the time that reality happens, the hope is that a majority of these features are mostly if not completely addressed and patched. There may still be security incidents and regular accidents in the infancy of AV but I do think over time, it will improve immensely.

Furthermore, the notion of making the manufacturing code open source will have both positives and negatives. The positive of open-source code is providing opportunities to constantly improve security flaws via a large community experimenting with it. On the other hand, it also provides malicious hackers with a blueprint for improving hacking tools to infect more cars. However, the feedback from people, security experts, and other coding professionals could make sizeable improvements in vehicle security despite the potential risk of hackers.

“Serious Concerns That AI Self-Driving Cars Cybersecurity Will Be A Hacker Leak Like An Open Sieve”, Forbes, August 25, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2021/08/25/serious-concerns-that-ai-self-driving-cars-cybersecurity-will-be-a-hacker-leak-like-an-open-sieve/?sh=5930e4c7477f