With the passage of time, computerized automated systems have taken over most of the technological advancements. Same is the case with vehicles, where the giant manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, and Audi etc are embedding such automated systems into their cars to get further ahead.

But as we all know, innovation comes with risk. The utilization of computer systems into cars for a better and modern approach can be of great help for humanity but might come with its own specific cons. Same is what happened recently with BMW.

More than a dozen security flaws have been found in the compute units of BMW cars. Any hacker with the required potential and tech can breach through these security flaws and gain access to the control of your BMW even when meters away from it. This can happen both in a steady and remote condition and might cause the driver to lose the control of the vehicle almost fully.

The Keen Security Labs at China conducted an experimental research to see if there was any vulnerability in the systems which could cause chaos and came up with these results. The vulnerabilities were focused on three main components

The Telematics Control Unit

Central Gateway Module

Infotainment System

These flaws were found in the models of X, I, 3, 5 and 7 series and mainly comprised of three different means though which the security system can be breached. 8 of the flaws were related to the Infotainment System that basically handles all the media related activities. 2 were related to Central Gateway Module. While 4 flaws affect the Telematics Control Unit that is responsible for locking/unlocking the doors remotely and accident assistance services. Some of these require a physical connection with the specific vehicle to gain access to it, some of them can be initiated by using a malware through the USB ports and others might not even require a physical connection.

This was an alarming situation and BMW announced that it will be rolling out software updates and patches to deal with the security problems and making sure that such security breaches don’t get to be executed any time in the future. In addition to that, impressed by the research work of the Keen Security Labs, they decided to award them with the “BMW Group Digitalization and IT Research Award” and said that they will be working together in the future with a collaboration for research and development activities.