Traffic Lights Hacked Using Normal Laptop
By Have you seen the “Italian Job” which starred Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Seth Green?! There’s this scene that Seth Green controls the traffic system of the entire area in which their heist will take place. What if you can pull off same stunt using your normal laptop?! Pretty amazing right!? But for authorities it is a serious problem.
Computer scientist J. Alex Halderman and his team conduct a study regarding the security of traffic lights in a Michigan town and the result is seriously frightening. The traffic lights can easily be hack using a normal laptop. This is due to vulnerable debugging ports and default usernames and passwords being use on the entire system.
Any person with an ample amount of knowledge with regards to networking and programming can get into the system via entering the frequency that the traffic lights are using, this can be done as long as the wireless card on the hacker’s laptop can communicate at the same frequency with the traffic lights.
Local government officials should take this matter seriously, there are numerous incidents that traffic lights and billboards are used to pull off a prank or scare people. They should tighten their security even further and don’t wait for people with a more mischievous plan to take over their system, in the event that it does happen chaos will erupt and a lot of civilians will be endangered.
