[SystemSafety] FWD: NY Times on App Developers for cars

[Steve Tockey]

Patrick,
>From what I've been hearing, the auto makers are becoming very sensitive
to the issue of the quality of software in vehicles. Not so much because
of what could happen in a single software defect-induced crash, but due to
the costs involved in a recall to take care of a software update.

How much they are aware of and pay attention to the fact that there are
better ways to do things remains to be seen...


-- steve



-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Graydon <patrick.graydon at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, July 1, 2013 9:32 PM
To: "systemsafety at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de"
<systemsafety at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
Subject: [SystemSafety] FWD: NY Times on App Developers for cars

While people on this list have been discussing who should write critical
software, the New York Times is telling its readers who will be building
the next generation of vehicle software:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/technology/detroit-embracing-new-auto-tec
hnologies-seeks-app-builders.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&adxnnl=1&hpw&adxnnlx=13
72738255-4RXY927aACXFF/QS9iSfAQ

Even when these Œapps¹ are not intended to provide safety-related
services, they are running on computers that are networked to the
vehicle¹s control computers and sometimes even have a cellular data
connection.  (The security community has already pointed out some of the
resulting dangers [1].)  Moreover, they are designed to control hardware ­
displays and loudspeakers ­ that could distract the driver.  While it does
discuss the Œcool¹ factor and space for ping-pong in the development labs,
the NYT does not comment on how GM ensures that this software does not
impose undue risk on motorists or how it ensures that its new programmers
are up to the job.  Details, details.

‹ Patrick

[1]  Stephen Checkoway, Damon Mccoy, Brian Kantor, Danny Anderson, Hovav
Shacham, Stefan Savage, Karl Koscher, Alexei Czeskis, Franziska Roesner,
and Tadayoshi Kohno. Comprehensive experimental analyses of automotive
attack surfaces. In Proceedings of the 20th USENIX Security Sym- posium,
August 2011. Available from: http://www.autosec.org/pubs/
cars-usenixsec2011.pdf.