Categories: Breaking NewsHackingSecurity

Car Hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek will work at Uber

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.

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.

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.”

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – car hacking, Uber)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.