Two security researchers discovered a security vulnerability in Subaru’s Starlink-connected vehicles last year that gave them “unrestricted targeted access to all vehicles and customer accounts” across the U.S., Canada, and Japan, according to a Wired report.
The researchers, Sam Curry and Shubham Shah, alerted the Japanese automaker to the flaws in November and they were quickly fixed. Subaru told Wired that “after being notified by independent security researchers, [Subaru] discovered a vulnerability in its Starlink service that could potentially allow a third party to access Starlink accounts. The vulnerability was immediately closed and no customer information was ever accessed without authorization.”
The researchers said that a hacker who only knew the car owner’s last name and ZIP code, email address, phone number, or license plate could remotely start, stop, lock, unlock, and retrieve the current vehicle, retrieve any vehicle’s complete location history from the past year, and find personally identifiable information of any customer.
Curry and Shah said that similar web-based flaws have been found in several other carmakers, including Kia, Honda, and Toyota.
While Curry and Shah acknowledged the security fixes, they warned that simply patching security updates after issues were found isn’t enough to remedy the more pervasive issue of privacy in the automotive industry. And even if those vulnerabilities are all remedied, employees still have access to location data.
“You can retrieve at least a year’s worth of location history for the car, where it’s pinged precisely, sometimes multiple times a day,” Curry told Wired. “Whether somebody’s cheating on their wife or getting an abortion or part of some political group, there are a million scenarios where you could weaponize this against someone.”
Login to add comment
Other posts in this group

If you’ve followed Apple for any length of time, you’ve no doubt come across the notion that the company doesn’t rush into adopting cutting-

Every now and then, you run into a tool that truly wows you.
It’s rare—especially nowadays, when everyone and their cousin is coming out with overhyped AI-centric codswallop tha

Tesla released its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, its first since the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, took up residence in the Trump White House and immediately began trying to fire f

There’s never a dull day in the world of weight-loss medication. This week brought new restrictions on compounded GLP-1 medication, the cheaper, copycat versions of brand-name drugs that tel

In December 2023, I wrote an article exploring Apple CEO Tim Cook’s most likely successors, because t

“Meta profits, kids pay the price,” was the message delivered by dozens of grieving families at the doors of Meta’s Manhattan office on Thursday.
Forty-five families traveled from

The world’s auto industry is getting a shake-up from Chinese automakers that