Deep Dive: Novel Techniques for Hijacking Self-Driving Cars

The car theft business has been an integral part of the American automotive industry for decades. If it weren’t for widespread grand theft auto and stereo theft, we’d all still be driving reliable cars such as the 90’s Toyota Camrys or 00’s Honda CR-Vs. While many fear that the advances in cyber and physical security in newer vehicles may be the end of the theft driven auto industry of inner cities across America, new techniques have been shown to make state of the art self-driving cars even easier to hijack, capture and sell for a profit than their outdated counterparts. The new technology has even driven higher demand for the products from modern chop shops than ever before. This paper will outline methods to confuse, disable and take advantage of the state-of-the-art algorithms and sensors that modern autonomous vehicles are now equipped with to revitalize the domestic car-jacking economy. In this paper, we will test new autonomous vehicle hijacking techniques such as basic traps, artificial pedestrians, laser pointers, and a pheromone induced honey-pot lure.