As vehicles become smarter and more connected to Wi-Fi networks, hackers will have more opportunities to breach vehicle systems, warns a study. Connecting your smartphone through an USB port can give a hacker backdoor access to data from both your phone and your car. Additionally, Google Android users who can download apps from unverified sites are even more at risk. The research, published in the Journal of Crime and Justice, applied a criminal justice theory to current forms of vehicle security and provided recommendations for manufacturers and owners to improve safety. "The risk with vehicles isn't just personal data – though that is still a real concern," said Thomas Holt, Professor at Michigan State University in the US.

The advents of disruptive technologies including AI, voice, and mixed reality have introduced a futuristic vision to the smart vehicle experience. Automobile makers and retailers both are trying to capitalize on new high-tech solutions to revamp the in-vehicle experience for both drivers and passengers. Such technology solutions are also helping mobility service providers to gain an edge over others in a highly competitive market. As the passenger experience becomes a top priority for companies, autonomous vehicles may evolve into hubs for immersive entertainment and new channels for retail. The auto companies are accelerating in-car experience while looking forward to optimizing across all facets of the car journey ensuring passenger safety and vehicle security.

As concerns over security risks for connected vehicles continue to build, automotive cybersecurity company SafeRide Technologies believes unsupervised machine learning will help keep threat actors out of the driver's seats. Earlier this month, SafeRide launched its vXRay technology for connected vehicles' security operations center (SOC), which uses unsupervised machine learning technology to provide behavioral profiling and anomaly detection to improve connected vehicle security. Gil Reiter, vice president of product management and marketing at SafeRide, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, said vXRay is available for OEMs and fleet managers to integrate in their vehicles' SOC. "The vXRay technology establishes the normal behavior of the vehicle without any dependencies or without any knowledge of the specific electronic control unit properties," Reiter said. "Once the behavioral baseline of the vehicle is established, the technology can accurately detect and then flag any abnormal behavior of the vehicle system and report the abnormal behavior to the connected vehicle's SOC for further analysis."

Australians like the idea of driverless cars, but first they want to take a look under the hood. Preliminary results from a national study undertaken by the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI) suggest Australians are fairly keen to give up the steering wheel. The survey of more than 5,000 Australians over the age of 18 found that a majority liked the idea of using a driverless vehicle when they were tired, when driving was "boring or monotonous," or if they had consumed alcohol or drugs. Despite the enthusiasm, Michael Regan, chief scientist at the Australian Road Research Board, who oversaw the survey, told Mashable that respondents had reservations ranging from security to financial liability. "The big thing people are concerned about is vehicle security," he said.