Elysium's Christian B. Hicks quoted in article about serious robot security shortfalls

Killer robots have been a part of the popular imagination for much of the past half century: see, for example, Robocop, the Terminator films, and both iterations of the Battlestar Galactica television series. But just how likely is the prospect of a killer robot in real life? An article written by Matt Lichtfuss and recently published on HackSurfer suggests that such a scenario could actually happen.

Lichtfuss cites a University of Washington experiment in which researchers hacked a medical robot, successfully launching "a DDoS attack that completely stopped the robot from operating—meaning that the surgeon who was remotely accessing the machine could not continue." He goes on to note that many experts agreed that death resulting from an attacker hacking a robot "is a possibility."

Elysium president and co-founder Christian Hicks, who was quoted in the HackSurfer article, noted that the threat of robot hacking extends beyond the medical industry. "Driverless cars, operating robots, and similar new technologies," Hicks opined, "are going to be susceptible to hacks until such products are created from the ground up with computer security as a driver of design."

To read the full text of the HackSurfer article, click here. To learn more about our Security and Privacy practice, click here.

Elysium's Christian B. Hicks quoted in article about serious robot security shortfalls

Security & Privacy, In the News

May 06, 2015