Here’s a scary thought: What if someone could hack into your car’s navigation system and send you errant messages or, worse yet, shut down the climate control or even the braking systems? It’s a risk that is very real.

According to Dark Reading, a business technology Web site, Italian researchers have discovered that hackers can get into your car’s Global Positioning System satellite and high-tech radio systems. It may seem like more fodder for a prank, but giving incorrect navigation messages is one way carjackers could reroute vehicles into deadends or alleyways. A attacker could bombard the system with enough messages to result in a denial-of-service attack that could shut down some of the car’s other systems with potentially catastrophic results.

The problem is that these systems receive information such as traffic conditions and accidents without verifying its source. It is a problem predominately with the Radio Data System — Traffic Message Channel RDS-TMC that is deployed throughout Europe and more and more in North America. It’s the kind of thing many of us have seen in use when our radio tells us that the station we are listening to broadcasts alternative rock or jazz.

The good news is that now this information is out there, it is more likely that some of the security holes can be patched. There is also a changeover in technology taking place that would, by itself, take care of the problem, but that is five years away.

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Just in from the MTA

We heard from the folks at Maryland’s Transit Administration in response to some recent columns: “In your March 28, 2007, column ‘Baltimore needs better ways for drivers to navigate; a reader asks why Baltimore’s Light Rail and Metro don’t connect to Washington. Back in the day, Baltimore and Washington were connected by a couple of different rail options, but the rise of the automobile and high-speed highways did that in. We’ve managed to put some of the system back in place in the form of Amtrak and MARC, but Light Rail and Metro are most efficient when they move lots of people short distances. We’re currently looking at the feasibility of extending Metrorail from Greenbelt up to BWI.

“As for why MTA doesn’t use both large and small buses, it all comes down to efficiency. A big part of the cost of operating a bus is the salary of the driver, so running a small bus does not necessarily save money. It’s also cheaper to keep parts in stock when the fleet is more uniform, and mechanics don’t have to learn to repair lots of different models.”

It’s always good to get the information directly from the source. Thanks for the response.

Questions, comments, random musings? Write to Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com.