To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (154318 ) 3/29/2013 1:15:43 PM From: grusum Read Replies (1) | Respond to The stuxnet virus was passed to the iranian centrifuge facility through a USB drive. i admit there's a controversy now about how it was introduced. i was going by a wiki article that claimed it entered via the internet. could be that you're right and it was USB.it was a secure facility with no internet connection. no question it was a secure facility, but i do believe it was connected to the internet.A virus could be introduced into a self-driving vehicle during production or more likely, when the vehicle is brought in for a tune-up. When you bring your car into the shop nowadays, they hook it up to a computer that analyzes the car and interfaces with its processor. i don't think the tune-up shops will ever have access to the driving software. the engine and most of the rest of the car, but not the driving software.As for incentive...what incentive is there for the current viruses that are on the internet? Unless Symantec is launching the viruses to sell more virus protection, i can't see any incentive. yes, some people just want to wreck things. but automakers would make sure that driving software was extremely hard to break into. if people couldn't trust the software, they wouldn't buy the cars and autonomous cars could never get started. if you're correct, they never will..And wouldn't there be incentive to other countries who would want to harm our economy? sure, there'd be some people that would love to do it. but the software will be extremely inaccessible. almost impossible attack all cars at once. and even if they only wanted to kill one person, there would be much easier ways to do it. there's no reason to make the software easily accessible. it's not like a gps that needs to be constantly updated for changes in roads.The virus fear will be groundless until the one time that we have reason for legitimate fear. this is true. but if it ever came to pass, i think they'd take even more extraordinary measures to make sure it would never happen again. the reason is that autonomous cars would be such a boon to our economy. transport of products by truck would become much cheaper because no drivers would be needed. it would be such a labor saver that the effects would ripple throughout the economy. products would be cheaper and the dollar would get stronger. it would save a lot of fuel because less trips would be necessary. just imagine if one of your kids wanted to spent the night at a friend's house. normally, it would be back and forth twice. but with an autonomous car, if you didn't need it anymore that night, it could safely deliver your kid and then wait overnight until he or she is supposed to come and then safely deliver them back. people will not want to lose the convenience, safety and savings it will bring.
