Israeli ex-spies want to help you defend your car from cybercrooks

Not fictional, but not factual either - yet

Yoni Heilbronn, marketing veep at Argus Cyber Security, told El Reg that although some of these attacks might sound like science fiction they are not that far fetched while conceding that the "problem has not manifested itself" as yet.

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He said that discussions between Argus and auto manufacturers show that the car industry is beginning to wake up to the issue. Regulations may drive the change to include information security technology in cars in much the way that physical security features such as airbags became standard.

"Liability an issue, particularly in the US," Heilbronn explained. "If car makers have not done everything they can then they can get sued."

"It's not that far-fetched to imagine recalls might happen for cyber-security reasons," he added.

The latest cars are "computers on wheels" with each sporting anything from 50 - 60 electronic computing units, according to Heilbronn. Most modern production cars have their own internal networks. It might be possible for a hacker to break into a car's entertainment systems before hacking into more critical components such as brake sub-systems.

Argus' technology is designed to thwart this type of attack by containing and blocking it.

An estimated 45 million connected cars were produced by 2013. European think tank IDATE predicts that number will hit 420 million by 2018. Every manufacturer has a "standard". Nothing like the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) standard exists for vehicles. Argus reckon its intrusion prevention systems for cars can, nonetheless, be readily adapted to work with different models from various manufacturers.

"Vehicle manufacturers know how to produce cars - safe cars," Heilbronn told El Reg. "But cybersecurity is a new issue and they don't have the expertise."

Argus's main strategy is to sell its intrusion prevention technology to car makers and tier-one suppliers such as Delphi rather than trying to bake security into the embedded electronic systems of vehicles.

Heilbronn said the approach is partly inspired by signals intelligence technology. "We're adapting methods from intelligence world, such as deep packet inspection, to monitor traffic on car networks in order to locate and block malicious attacks," he said.