Keeping industrial vehicles secure in a digital landscape

OEMs, integrators and suppliers must continuously process, assess and identify platform vulnerabilities to prioritize and implement updates that protect systems from cyberattacks and data breaches.

Security researchers have demonstrated that the control systems in vehicles and machines are open to attack. In 2010, researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego demonstrated that by gaining physical access to a vehicle, they could manipulate critical systems like brakes and engines. Just a few years later, security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely compromised a vehicle over the internet, controlling steering, braking and acceleration, leading to a 1.4 million vehicle recall.

In 2024, researchers at Colorado State University successfully demonstrated a wireless drive-by hack by exploiting vulnerabilities in common electronic logging devices (ELDs). In their proof-of-concept test, they achieved remote control over a truck by reflashing the ELD with malicious firmware, which allowed them to slow down a moving truck and show a design for a truck-to-truck worm virus that could theoretically spread through a fleet.