Self-driving cars present terrorism risk, FBI director says

The rollout of self-driving cars could mean an increased threat of terrorist attacks.

That was the alarming warning delivered during a discussion on national security at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland.

While the safety benefits of autonomous vehicles (AVs) have long been touted, the need for caution was highlighted by Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray.

Wray explained that the proliferation of AVs will present security issues in multiple ways.

Firstly, he claimed they offer the potential to be used as a physical tool in an attack. And he also pointed out how their data could be harvested and manipulated for misuse.

“When you talk about autonomous vehicles, it’s obviously something that we’re excited about, just like everybody,” Wray told the panel. “But there are harms that we have to guard against that are more than just the obvious.

“One of them is the danger that there could be ways to confuse or distort the algorithms to cause physical harm.”

Wray cited an example of how this could be done by altering a road sign. 

“I’m thinking about a story I heard not that long ago about the researchers who were able to trick a self-driving car’s algorithm by essentially putting a piece of black tape over a stop sign,” he said.

The incident he was referring to was reported in 2020. It saw McAfee researchers confuse a Tesla by placing black tape across the middle of the number “3” on a 35 mph road sign, leading the car to believe the limit was 85 mph. This caused the Tesla’s cruise control system to accelerate.

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