SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE, February 20, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The last several years have been fascinating for those of us who have been eagerly observing the steady move towards autonomous driving. While semi-autonomous vehicles have existed for many years, the vision of fleets of fully autonomous vehicles operating as a single connected entity is very much still a thing of the future. However, the latest technical advances in this area bring us a unique and compelling picture of some of the capabilities we might expect to see “down the road.” Pun intended.

For example, nearly every new vehicle produced in 2019 has a model which implements state-of-the art sensors that utilize analytics technologies, such as machine learning or artificial intelligence, and are designed to automate, assist or replace many of the functions humans were formerly responsible for. These can range from rain-sensors on the windshield to control wiper blades, to object detection sensors using radar and lidar for collision avoidance, to camera systems capable of recognizing objects in range and providing direct driving input to the vehicle.

This broad adoption represents a fascinating development in our industry; it’s one of those very rare times when researchers can lead the curve ahead of adversaries in identifying weaknesses in underlying systems.

McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) has a specific goal: identify and illuminate a broad spectrum of threats in today’s complex landscape. With model hacking, the study of how adversaries could target and evade artificial intelligence, we have an incredible opportunity to influence the awareness, understanding and development of more secure technologies before they are implemented in a way that has real value to the adversary.

With this in mind, we decided to focus our efforts on the broadly deployed MobilEye camera system, today utilized across over 40 million vehicles, including Tesla models that implement Hardware Pack 1.

18 Months of Research

McAfee Advanced Threat Research follows a responsible disclosure policy, as stated on our website. As such, we disclosed the findings below to both Tesla and MobilEye 90 days prior to public disclosure. McAfee disclosed the findings to Tesla on September 27th, 2019 and MobilEye on October 3rd, 2019. Both vendors indicated interest and were grateful for the research but have not expressed any current plans to address the issue on the existing platform. MobilEye did indicate that the more recent version(s) of the camera system address these use cases.

MobilEye is one of the leading vendors of Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS) catering to some of the world’s most advanced automotive companies. Tesla, on the other hand, is a name synonymous with ground-breaking innovation, providing the world with the innovative and eco-friendly smart cars.

As we briefly mention above, McAfee Advanced Threat Research has been studying what we call “Model Hacking,” also known in the industry as adversarial machine learning. Model Hacking is the concept of exploiting weaknesses universally present in machine learning algorithms to achieve adverse results. We do this to identify the upcoming problems in an industry that is evolving technology at a pace that security has not kept up with.

We started our journey into the world of model hacking by replicating industry papers on methods of attacking machine learning image classifier systems used in autonomous vehicles, with a focus on causing misclassifications of traffic signs. We were able to reproduce and significantly expand upon previous research focused on stop signs, including both targeted attacks, which aim for a specific misclassification, as well as untargeted attacks, which don’t prescribe what an image is misclassified as, just that it is misclassified. Ultimately, we were successful in creating extremely efficient digital attacks which could cause misclassifications of a highly robust classifier, built to determine with high precision and accuracy what it is looking at, approaching 100% confidence.

For more information, please visit the McAfee blog.

David Okubo
The Hoffman Agency
+65 8661 2792
email us here

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