A BYD Shark 6 Hack Shows the Risks of Connected Cars
Brief
A BYD Shark 6 was remotely hacked, exposing vehicle controls, location tracking and cabin audio, raising serious connected-car security concerns.
A journalist drove a BYD Shark 6 down a country road outside Canberra while a hacker sitting on the shoulder killed the headlights with a keystroke. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s what happened during a two week test by Four Corners and a cybersecurity researcher named Dan Hreszczuk.
Hreszczuk runs Fortify Labs in Canberra and specialises in car security. His job was simple: find out what BYD, or anyone with access to BYD’s systems in China, could see and do to the vehicle remotely. He didn’t expect it to be quick.
“It was easier than we were expecting.” Hreszczuk says.
That wasn’t just an offhand comment. Hreszczuk makes a living finding ways to break into cars, so the fact that he was surprised by how easy it was is significant.