As our cars get more connected these days, not only does this mean that our vehicles are more than just transportation devices, but it also opens the door to the scary possibility that our vehicles could get hacked. Recently according to a report from Troy Hunt (via BBC), it seems that the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle might have a security flaw to it.According to Hunt, it seems that this flaw will allow hackers to hijack the vehicle. Obviously they won’t be able to drive remotely, but certain aspects of the car like its air-conditioning and heating system can be controlled. A flaw was also found in the Leaf’s companion app that allowed the data from the driver’s journey to be access.
According to Hunt, he had informed Nissan about the flaw but apparently it still remains unfixed until today. He also points out that users can protect themselves by disabling the Nissan CarWings account. He also suggested that Nissan should turn it off completely because while it might not be a life-threatening hack, hackers could still cause a ton of mischief.
Speaking to the BBC, Hunt said, “The right thing to do at the moment would be for Nissan to turn it off altogether. They are going to have to let customers know. And to be honest, a fix would not be hard to do. It’s not that they have done authorisation [on the app] badly, they just haven’t done it at all, which is bizarre.”
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