Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, the famous car hackers who recently demonstrated that some Fiat Chrysler cars can be remotely hijacked, have been hired by ridesharing giant Uber.
The popular hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek who recently hackers a Fiat connected car have announced that they have been hired by the Uber Company.
Miller and Valasek have spent the last couple of years testing the security implemented in modern cars, in 2013 they managed to take control of a Toyota Prius model.
Charlie Miller was working Twitter where he has spent the past three years.
Looking forward to starting Tuesday with the great team at @Uber Advanced Technology Center. Should be a cool challenge and a lot of fun.
— Charlie Miller (@0xcharlie) 28 Agosto 2015
Valasek is leaving IOActive the security firm where he had served as director of vehicle security research team. Both will be working at Uber’s Advanced Technology Center in Pittsburgh, a structure created by the Uber company in February in collaboration with the Carnegie Mellon University. The Uber’s Advanced Technology Center is considered a center of excellence for the research in areas such as mapping, vehicle safety, and autonomy technology. In particular the center focuses its activity on self-driving cars.
Super excited to start @uber Advanced Technology Center in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Love this city! — Chris Valasek (@nudehaberdasher) 29 Agosto 2015
Following the Jeep Hack, Fiat recalled 1.4 million vehicles in the US to update the onboard software, the list of models is long and includes:
- 2013-2015 MY Dodge Viper specialty vehicles
- 2013-2015 Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups
- 2013-2015 Ram 3500, 4500, 5500 Chassis Cabs
- 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Cherokee SUVs
- 2014-2015 Dodge Durango SUVs
- 2015 MY Chrysler 200, Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger sedans
- 2015 Dodge Challenger sports coupes
The recent events led U.S. senators to call for the introduction of new legislation designed to protect car owners against security and privacy risks.
Let’s close with a comment I used to close a post I have recently published on the car hacking:
“Researchers must encourage the automotive industry to consider seriously the security as a mandatory requirement for the safety of car owners; most important is that car owners in the next future will chose their cars also based on security features implemented by the automakers.”
(Security Affairs – car hacking, Uber)
