IEEE 802.11p (WAVE) gains public attention on its sucurity issue

Is it be easy to hack a car? Will it be easier to hack a highway with IEEE 802.11p?

Reported by COMPUTERWORLD, the emerging IEEE 802.11p technology could become the weak point for the highway safety and toll collection system that working on top of it. Rob Havelt, director of penetration testing at security vendor Trustwave's SpiderLabs, pointed out the threats faced by the emerging Car2Car communication technologies in his briefings at Black Hat DC.

This is not the first time that the security issues of Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) or system alike are discussed. Actually, along with the academia research on Car2Car communication, security has been always studied, e.g. SEVECOM project. However, a perfect security solution for Car2Car is very hard to achieve, if it really exists.

Particularly interesting, the experts of the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge (GCDC) have developed the Linux driver module that can easily turn the COTS WiFi radio into IEEE 802.11p complying ITS transceiver on 5.9 GHz ITS band.

IEEE 802.11p is turning cars into trains

It could be true that when you are "driving" on the highway and reading the newspaper at the same time. See how Volvo and her partners are turning cars into an autonomously formed train on the highway.


The first demonstration from the EU Framework 7 project SARTRE. (Curtsy to Newscientist )

Man can guess what are driving behind the car-train are wireless radios, sensors and positioning sensors. By putting the chaotic traffic into neatly organized platoons, the technologies are saving energy and protecting us.

It's quite interesting to see the well ordered traffic bring efficiency. Think about the chaotic wireless data packets exchanged among the vehicles. There must be better ways to coordinate the "traffic over the air" than the RANDOM IEEE 802.11p, or?

About the SARTRE project: http://www.sartre-project.eu/en/Sidor/default.aspx