[WebeV]

There is one advantage. If you don't have the wireless sensors you can't be tracked through them or somehow hack them wirelessly: http://arstechnica.com/security/news...re-sensors.ars

The tire pressure monitors built into modern cars have been shown to be insecure by researchers from Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina. The wireless sensors, compulsory in new automobiles in the US since 2008, can be used to track vehicles or feed bad data to the electronic control units (ECU), causing them to malfunction.

Earlier in the year, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California San Diego showed that the ECUs could be hacked, giving attackers the ability to be both annoying, by enabling wipers or honking the horn, and dangerous, by disabling the brakes or jamming the accelerator.

The new research shows that other systems in the vehicle are similarly insecure. The tire pressure monitors are notable because they're wireless, allowing attacks to be made from adjacent vehicles. The researchers used equipment costing $1,500, including radio sensors and special software, to eavesdrop on, and interfere with, two different tire pressure monitoring systems.

The pressure sensors contain unique IDs, so merely eavesdropping enabled the researchers to identify and track vehicles remotely. Beyond this, they could alter and forge the readings to cause warning lights on the dashboard to turn on, or even crash the ECU completely.

Unlike the work earlier this year, these attacks are more of a nuisance than any real danger; the tire sensors only send a message every 60-90 seconds, giving attackers little opportunity to compromise systems or cause any real damage. Nonetheless, both pieces of research demonstrate that these in-car computers have been designed with ineffective security measures.

Would it be possible to do an attack over bluetooth or another wireless system? I doubt it but it's an interesting idea. If someone could get physical access to your car like a valet, they could put in a self erasing firmware which could do these: http://arstechnica.com/security/news...from-speed.ars

Once the researchers had gained access, they developed a number of attacks against their target vehicles, and then tested many of them while the cars were being driven around an old airstrip. Successful attacks ranged from the annoying—switching on the wipers and radio, making the heater run full blast, or chilling the car with the air conditioning—to the downright dangerous. In particular, the brakes could be disabled. The ignition key could then be locked into place, preventing the driver from turning the car off.

The researchers could even upload new firmware to various ECUs, permitting a range of complex behaviors to be programmed in. What they tested was harmless—turning on the wipers when the car reached 20mph—but the possibilities were enormous: for example, the ECU could wait until the car was going at 80mph, and then disable all the brakes. They could also program in the ability to reboot and reset the ECU, so their hacked firmware would be removed from the system, leaving no trace of what they had done.

About the only thing it seemed they couldn't do was steer the car, and even that may be possible in high-end vehicles with self-parking capabilities.