In light of the news that SEAT has begun roll-out of Amazon Alexa in its new Leon and Ateca models, please find below comment from David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab:
“Installing Amazon Alexa in cars offers new opportunities, but it also adds security issues. Everyone wants to enjoy the convenience of new gadgets, but there needs to be a compromise between convenience and security. This new technology represents a proliferation of devices holding and sending/receiving personal data, so car manufacturers need to ensure that this technology is secure.
“Since the technology behind the Amazon Echo is powered by AI, it stores command history to help make the device “smarter”. That way, it can better respond to future commands. While the reasoning behind storing command data is sound, imagine what could go wrong if someone else could get access to that? Even if Amazon doesn’t do anything questionable with your interactions whilst you are in your vehicle, it does store them in the cloud, which isn’t totally hacker-proof. As this technology could let people control their smart home from their cars, manufacturers must do everything to ensure that the network cannot be compromised.”
