> A disgruntled former employee of Texas Auto Center chose a creative way to get back at the Austin-based dealership: He hacked into the company's computers and remotely activated the vehicle-immobilization system, which triggered the horn and disabled the ignition system in more than 100 of the vehicles. The dealership had installed the system in its cars as a way to deal with customers who fell behind on their payments.
I'm not going to get into the benefits of open source for consumer appliances, just that there is quite a bit of research into internal communication within the vehicle's operational systems and it's quite poor.
Giving all cars a 3G connection to the world and having shitty security means we're going to have a bad time. I had hopes with Google showing interest in getting Android into cars, but it's just for "infotainment" which in all likelihood means offloading the development of those shitty DVD players.
Updating the firmware of the various ECUs within your car involves bringing it to a dealership/repair shop, which probably means they're never going to get updated. Let that sink in for a moment -- imagine a plethora of Windows XP boxes having 3G connections and rarely getting updated even by the end-user.
[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_R...
Of course the old adage applies, if you have access to the hardware, all security bets are off.
I don't really know about the state of car entertainment system design, however. Based off of the Toyota breaks article, I should probably get worried though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle...
and if something like this really must exist PLEASE at least make it sure that nobody more far than 1km (probably a legitimate police officer at the scene) can turn it on..if you are farther than that location coordinates would be more than enough in my view..