Hacking, security and autonomy

So, by now,  the whole planet will be aware of the Uber hacking scandal, where over FIFTY SEVEN MILLION people had their data compromised....and then had the breach surpressed by Uber. 

Now, given that almost every industry you could name has some form of technological aspect to it, this latest revelation begs the question as to how safe is our data, and more importantly how safe are we now that the age of autonomous transport is upon us.

It is already abundantly clear that no form of data is truly safe, given the multiple instances of hacking across the globe,  but with the age of autonomous vehicles now here, what happens if (and when) a vehicles satellite navigation system gets hacked. 

We have already seen the National Health Service computer network come to a grinding halt and lives be put at risk because of it, however this potentially becomes far more amplified if a vehicle gets hacked because of the sheer scale of damage a vehicle can do before it gets brought to a grinding halt. If a would be hacker can get control of more than one vehicle, we then potentially have a real-life version of the Playstation game Carmageddon.

Extrapolating this to its logical (or illogical) conclusion, this then becomes a massive security nightmare because it takes just one lunatic to take control of one vehicle,  pack it full of explosives,  then attack any given target of choice. It could be argued that the same could be achieved by a suicide bomber, but, this is where it becomes a complete nighmare, if one vehicle can be hacked and packed then its a sure-fire bet the same individual can take control of multiple vehicles and do the same thing at the same time, thus stretching the security services to breaking point. 

Any company building any autonomous vehicle has to make sure that if a vehicle is hacked, there is some sort of over-ride system to shut the vehicle down with immediate effect. 

Technology is a wonderful thing, this includes autonomous vehicles.....but not at any price. The public must be safe and secure,  if this cannot be achieved then we must not see one single autonomous vehicle on our streets until the vehicle can be proven to be 100% unhackable.....and this could be a long way off given the current flaws in all computer systems.