Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek will introduce on August an intrusion-detection system for automobiles at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The detection system is a prototype device which has the ability of preventing digital hijacking of vehicles.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the two hackers started their research last year and spent months infiltrating into a Ford Escape and Toyota Prius.

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According to Miller, who is also a security engineer for Twitter, “These attacks seemed serious enough that we should actually consider how to defend against them.”

Miller also said that they really want to do something in solving this kind of problem.

The anti-hacking device is composed of an mbed NXP microcontroller and a simple board. Once it is plugged into the OBD2 port, a jack under the vehicle’s dashboard, it will recognize the vehicle’s usual data patterns by switching it on for a minute.

The two security researchers built the device for US$150 in parts.

Users may then activate its detection mode monitor for unfamiliar signals or a command that should be activated when the car is parked and not while driving it.

If the device detects anomalies, it will automatically shut down the car’s network and disable its higher-level functions such as power steering and lane assist.

“You just plug it in, it learns, then it stops attacks,” states Valasek, director of IOActive for vehicle security research.

As the tests were done through tangibly plugging into the target vehicle, the two will also study possible wireless attacks in automobiles.

Tagsanti-hacking device, anti-hacking, automobiles, Black Hat security conference, digital hijacking of vehicles, hijacking of vehicles, DARPA