Connected cars face new security threats

Modern vehicles are computers on wheels, talking to smartphones, other cars, satellites and cloud servers to navigate, entertain and even drive for you. That convenience opens a new attack surface for bad actors. The study, published in Software Quality Journal, examined 413 software vulnerabilities in connected cars between January 2022 and September 2024, showing a shift from internal to external problems.

Remote vulnerabilities rise

The study shows that more than a third of the identified weaknesses arise in external applications such as websites, mobile apps and cloud services—almost three times the share seen in earlier research. Severity has also climbed; about 45 % of the flaws are high severity and 16 % are critical, compared with only 5 % in a decade‑earlier study. These figures illustrate how attackers are increasingly targeting the digital parts of cars that connect to the outside world.

Remote attacks can endanger driver safety. In 2015 researchers demonstrated how they could steer a Jeep Cherokee by hacking its infotainment system. More recent reports show that a flaw in a Škoda infotainment network could crash the system if a vehicle’s Wi‑Fi is accessed. In December 2024, researchers revealed that location information associated with around eight hundred thousand vehicles from Volkswagen Group brands had been left accessible online, allowing the reconstruction of drivers’ movements.

Manufacturers must embed security throughout the development process and keep entertainment systems isolated from safety‑critical controls. For drivers, installing software updates, using strong passwords and limiting the personal data shared with connected services are practical steps. Cars already know where you’ve been—keeping that information private protects you and others.