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Alissa Knight has worked in cybersecurity for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, she has focused her vulnerability research into hacking connected cars, embedded systems, and IoT devices for clients in the United States, Middle East, Europe, and Asia. She continues to work with some of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers and OEMs on building more secure connected cars.
Alissa is the Group CEO of Brier & Thorn and is also the managing partner at Knight Ink, where she blends hacking with content creation of written and visual content for challenger brands and market leaders in cybersecurity. As a serial entrepreneur, Alissa was the CEO of Applied Watch and Netstream, companies she sold in M&A transactions to publicly traded companies in international markets.
Her passion professionally is meeting and learning from extraordinary leaders around the world and sharing her views on the disruptive forces reshaping global markets. Alissa’s long-term goal is to help as many organizations as possible develop and execute on their strategic plans and focus on their areas of increased risk, bridging silos to effectively manage risk across organizational boundaries, and enable them to pursue intelligent risk taking as a means to long-term value creation. You can learn more about Alissa on her homepage at http://www.alissaknight.com, connect with her on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter @alissaknight.
I want to thank the many people in my life who’ve come and gone and those who’ve helped me along the way in better understanding such an arcane area of vulnerability research. In many ways, my work with them contributed to much of the knowledge that has become this book. Particularly, I’d like to thank Robert Leale, The Crazy Danish Hacker, “Decker,” Solomon Thuo, Dr. Karsten Nohl (cryptography expert), Ian Tabor, Graham Ruxton, and everyone else along the way who taught me through my journey and supported me through the countless days and nights writing this book.
I’d also like to pay my respects to my father who never got to publish his own book, Sojourn, who died much too young but lived a life much fuller than those who’ve lived a hundred years.
I’d also like to thank my son, Daniel, who has always been my inspiration and the reason I wake up each and every morning, and who will always be my greatest achievement. My sister and my mom, the strongest women I know but who also know how to love without restraint. My best friend, Emily, who taught me how to truly live and be my best self and Carolina Ruiz, my business partner and friend.
And finally, I’d like to thank the love of my life, my best friend, wife, and biggest fan, Melissa - “I could conquer the world with just one hand as long as you are holding the other.”
Automotive cybersecurity is perhaps the most unique and challenging security problem humankind has ever faced. We have thousand-pound machines traveling at high rates of speed, carrying human lives and critical cargo, surrounded by other identical machines now becoming fully connected, automated, and even communicating with their surroundings. With a broad spectrum of new technologies entering into the automotive space to facilitate these new capabilities and features, the average vehicle can require 10–100+ million lines of code and need to manage multiple protocols. With the ever-growing complexity of vehicles, it's easy to imagine how many potential security flaws could exist in any given vehicle.
As the former global lead for the vehicle security assurance program at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (2017–2019), I was faced with tackling this complex challenge every day utilizing several tools. One of the most versatile tools that I leveraged was an industry outreach program. Through this program I connected with independent researchers to encourage and facilitate security research against our systems. It was through the efforts of that program that I came across Alissa Knight for the first time. Alissa's efforts and publications fill a huge gap in education and awareness both for automotive industry companies and fellow researchers alike. I personally have grown as a professional and as a hacker directly through watching and reading Alissa's publications.
This security challenge is a challenge for society; therefore, society as a whole should be trying to solve it, not just the businesses making the product. Alissa is a champion for security awareness and best practices, driving a more secure and safe future for us all. I hope that the contents of this book, and Alissa's several other publications, help you become a more aware and secure individual. Use the contents responsibly, join a local security research group, and take Alissa's example to give back to the community so that we all can benefit.
Thaddeus Bender
Global Vehicle Security Assurance Program Manager, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
Trust. An imperative emotion that allows us humans to understand the world around us. It's a primitive requirement. When we eat, we must trust that the food won't kill us. We've developed a sense of taste and smell just to allow us to trust our meals. When we walk, we need to know our next step isn't off a cliff or into the side of large oak tree. So, we've developed sight so that our surroundings don't kill us. We must trust the people we interact with. So, we've developed our suspicion and a sense of humor.
Trust is how we survive. It is something we need to move through life. It is embedded in every conscious and unconscious decision we make—every one. So, when we eat, walk, or sleep or even when we drive, we must trust that the sensors and systems that move us will not lead us to an untimely demise. This is what is at stake in the future of mobility. Vehicles need to be trusted. Self-driving vehicles must earn our trust. However, technology is not yet perfect, and it is possible to have too much trust in that system.
In 2016, the first autopilot death happened. The driver of the vehicle, Joshua Brown, trusted that his autopilot system would not allow the vehicle to drive at full speed into a semi-truck trailer. His system was operating normally. The challenge was that the semi-truck trailer was white and against the bright sky, the vehicle's object detection algorithm was unable to differentiate the trailer from its surroundings. However, the system worked as advertised. Users must keep their eyes on the road as autopilot was not developed to handle all situations. In this case the trust in the system was too great. Somewhere along the way, Joshua, a frequent poster of Autopilot success stories, over-trusted his system and as a result paid the ultimate price.
In the very near future, the next generations of autonomous vehicles will arrive, and these systems will be advertised to work without user interaction. The driver of the vehicle will, in fact, be a passenger in the vehicle while the systems are active, allowing him to ignore the speed, trajectory, or the surroundings of the vehicle while it is in motion. These systems will require the operator to trust, with his life, the multitude of electronic control modules, vehicle networks, millions of lines of code, and electronic sensors that comprise the autonomous driving system. To cap it off, new technologies such as in-vehicle Wi-Fi, telematics controllers, and Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications add more complexity and areas of attack.
Securing these systems against unwanted tampering requires vigilant, resourceful, smart, organized, and talented people to ensure and enable the trust of connected, self-driving vehicles. And this is where Alissa Knight shines. She is an outspoken proponent of vehicle cybersecurity. Not only does she want to enable a community of cybersecurity engineers, but she wants to ensure that vehicle manufacturers and their component suppliers strive to secure their software, hardware, and sensors.
I first met Alissa in Germany, where she was living and working on this very goal. On our first meeting she greeted me with a hug while stating the obvious, “I'm a hugger.” Intuitively, she understood what trust was. She knew that an embrace would help foster a bond that would help us work together for our current projects and those into the future.
Her talents didn't end there. Alissa has continued to work to teach and talk about how to secure vehicle systems by giving online courses on how to set up and test cellular network base stations for testing of telematic systems and many other related topics.
I'm proud to know Alissa Knight and to have worked with her on several projects to protect the future of vehicle electronic systems. Alissa, I wish you well with this book and the many more waiting to be written by you ahead and in life. Thank you for the trust—and the hugs!
Robert Leale
President, CanBusHack Inc.