University of Michigan researchers have revealed that traffic lights are vulnerable to hacking after working with a local agency to find weaknesses in the traffic infrastructure.
Publishing their findings in a report, the research team worked with a local state road agency and found three major failings in Michigan's traffic infrastructure, PCMag.com reported.
"[The] critical nature of traffic infrastructure requires that it be secure against computer-based attacks, but this is not always the case," the paper said.
The researchers, who are part of the school's electrical engineering and computer science department, found that that the wireless network was not encrypted and did not require secure authentication. The infrastructure was also vulnerable to being exploited.
"With the appropriate hardware and a little effort, an adversary can reconfigure a traffic controller to suit [their] needs," the paper said. "Until these systems are designed with security as a priority, the security of the entire traffic infrastructure remains at serious risk."
Headed by computer science professor J. Alex Halderman, the University of Michigan team performed the white-hat hacking job on around 100 traffic lights using just a laptop and some code, NBC News reported.
"The vendors had not enabled encryption by default and the road agency never did so themselves," said team member and Ph.D student Branden Ghena, as quoted by NBC News. "It is as simple to turn on as checking a button."
Hackers can disable sections of the traffic light grid or switch up light schedules. While breaking into the system, the research team could also place the entire network into a "failsafe mode;" for example, all the lights could be left blinking red.
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