Researcher claims to hack self-driving car sensors with simple laser

The self-driving car era isn't yet upon us, but security research is well underway.

Jonathan Petit, a Principal Scientist at Security Innovation, will present a paper detailing how to spoof Lidar sensors used in self-driving cars at the Black Hat Europe security conference in November, reports IEEE Spectrum. Petit claims that he can "trick" a self-driving car into seeing objects that aren't actually there using a low-power laser and a pulse generator.

Lidar — short for Light Detection and Ranging — is a radar-like system that uses pulsed lasers to create a 3D image of the world. In some self-driving cars, Lidar is essentially the eyes of the car. Read more...