Who is Watching My Car — Car Monitoring

By on March 13th, 2015 in Articles, Privacy & Security

Apparently my auto insurance company was not reading my recent blog entry.  They introduced a car monitoring device, “In-Drive” that will track my driving habits and provide a discount (or increase) in my insurance rates.

Potential Abuses of Car Monitoring Devices

There are a few small problems. The device connects into the diagnostic port of the car, allowing it to take control of the car (brakes, acceleration, etc.), or for a hacker to do this (see prior Blog entry). It is connected to the mothership (ET phones home), and that channel can be used both ways, so the hacker that takes over my car can be anywhere in the world. I can think of three scenarios where this is actually feasible.

  1. Someone wants to kill the driver (very focused, difficult to detect).
  2. Blackmail – where bad guys decide to crash a couple of cars, or threaten to, and demand payment to avoid mayhem (what would the insurance company CEO say to such a demand?)  (Don’t they have insurance for this?)
  3. Terrorism – while many cyber attacks do not yield the requisite “blood on the front page” impact that terrorists seek, this path can do that — imagine ten thousand cars all accelerating and losing brakes at the same time … it will probably get the desired coverage.

As previously mentioned, proper software engineering (now a licensed profession in the U.S.) could minimize this security risk.

Then There is Privacy

The insurance company’s privacy policy does not allow them to collect the data that their web page claims this device will collect — so clearly privacy is an afterthought in this case. The data collected is unclear — they have a statement about the type of data collected, and a few FAQ’s later, have a contradictory indication that the location data is only accurate within a forty square mile area, except maybe when it is more accurate. What is stored, and for what period of time, accessible to what interested parties (say a divorce lawyer), or with what protections is unclear.

A different insurance company, Anthem, encountered a major attack that compromises identity information (at least) for a large number of persons. I’m just a bit skeptical that my auto insurance company has done their analysis of that situation and upgraded their systems to avoid similar breaches and loss of data. For those wondering what types of privacy policies might make sense, I encourage you to view the OECD policy principles and examples. Organizations that actually are concerned with privacy would be covering all of these bases at least in their privacy statements. (Of course they can do this and still have highly objectionable policies, or change their policies without notice.)