Chinese electric buses raising security concerns in Scandinavia
Danish authorities are studying how to close a security loophole in hundreds of Chinese electric buses that reportedly can be remotely deactivated. This comes after authorities in Norway, where buses made by a company called Yutong, discovered that the Chinese supplier has remote access for software updates and diagnostics in the vehicles control systems, raising fears that they could affect the buses while moving.
Norway’s public transport authority, Ruter, decided to test two of the Chinese electric buses in an isolated environment. “The testing revealed risks that we are now taking measures against. National and local authorities have been informed and must assist with additional measures at a national level,” Bernt Reitan Jenssen, Ruter’s chief executive, said.
The investigation uncovered remote deactivation that could be prevented by removing sim cards from the buses. But doing so would also mean the bus is disconnected from other systems. Ruter says it plans to bring stricter security requirements for future items it acquires. It should act before the next generation of buses arrive, Jenssen said, which may be “more integrated and harder to secure.”
Movie, the largest public transport company in Denmark has 469 Chinese electric buses in service, 262 of which were produced by Yutong.
Last week, Jeppe Gaard, Movia’s chief operating officer, says he was made aware that “electric buses, like electric cars, can be remotely deactivated if their software systems have web access. This is not a Chinese bus problem. It is a problem for all types of vehicles and devices with Chinese electronics built in.”
According to Gaard, Denmark’s agency for civil protection and emergency management, Samsik, said that it was not aware of any specific case of a bus being deactivated, but warned that the vehicles equipped with “subsystems with internet connectivity and sensors (cameras, microphones, GPS) that can constitute vulnerabilities which could be exploited to disrupt bus operations.”
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