NHTSA Urged to Address Cybersecurity Risks From On-Board Diagnostic Ports

Concerned about cybersecurity risks to on-board diagnostic ports in vehicles, House Commerce Committee Republican leaders want National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Mark Rosekind to convene an industry-wide effort to address the potential problems, said the committee in a Monday news release. “In the past several years, information security researchers have discovered and demonstrated increasingly effective -- and increasingly frequent -- attacks on the internal networks of automobiles through the use of On-Board Diagnostic (OBD-II) ports and the devices that connect to them," they wrote to Rosekind. Researchers have demonstrated they could remotely unlock a vehicle's doors or cut its brakes or power steering and NHTSA needs to develop a plan to address the risk, they added. Signatories to the letter include House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.; Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa.; and Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Michael Burgess, R-Texas. NHTSA didn't comment.