probably because the batteries accelerated the fire (Deutsche Presseagentur dpa
2018a). Recent fatal accidents happening in test drives of self-driving e-cars from
Tesla
11 and Uber
12
– apparently happening when the semiautonomous driving
assistant was switched off – make people lose confidence in other vehicles running
on the same flawed software because a technical failure is a constructional flaw
affecting the entire production process of a specific series of vehicles (Eustacchio
2018). Lawyers warn that “. . .we cannot talk of technically proven, let alone officially approved driving systems as long as self-driving cars are still in the testing
phase” (Eustacchio 2018), stressing that legal accountability is transferring away
from the driver toward vehicle manufacturers and software engineers in case that
autonomous cars should ever become an “everyday phenomenon” (Eustacchio
2018). Furthermore, the FBI warns that autonomous cars could be used as “lethal
weapons,” e.g., by criminals overmodulating security features to make cars ignore
stoplights and velocity restrictions or by terrorists programming autonomous cars
equipped with explosives to turn them into autonomous bombs (Harris 2014).
Beyond that, autonomous cars can be hacked by laser pointers (Curtis 2015).
Autonomous e-cars are only one example for the safety risks of Smart City
technology. Cyber wars offer a range of possibilities for serious attacks on a city’s
economic and physical safety. As 50 billion appliances are supposed to be
IoT-connected on a global base by 2020 and as cyber-attacks are increasing in
both frequency and sophistication, and critical infrastructure is highly vulnerable
to cyber-attacks on essential services like electrical power, telecommunications,
health care, transportation, water supply, and the Internet (Rando 2014), cities
must brace themselves for potential cyber-attacks. Information systems can be
sabotaged by various methods, e.g., by the “Trojan horse” program or a “worm”
replicating and “infecting” multiple systems (Rando 2014). According to IBM,
compromised IoT devices like smart meters, smart watches, and building automation
systems can be weaponized in a way that they do not only pose a danger to the
devices’ owners but also to others so that a worm attack on a smart meter could cause
power outages for thousands of consumers, even though a worm is only one attack
vector in addition to the use of IoT devices as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
platform and the creation of globally distributed botnets (Rando 2014). Cyber
security experts warn that especially smart grids are highly susceptible to cyber
attacks due to weaknesses in the communications infrastructure and stress that certain
energy providers use a Smart Grid at the customer's site which uses the network
installed at the customer's site for datasharing via the customer's Wi-fi connection (Brandon 2013).
Cities using a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system are
especially vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Unifying decentralized facilities, SCADA
systems have poor security protocols lacking identification and encryption security
features (Thibodeaux 2017). Hackers attacking a city’s SCADA system could disable
11 Killing its test driver (The Guardian 2018).
12 An UBER car ran into a lady walking outside the zebra crossing who died in the clinic later
on (Levin and Wong 2018; The Guardian 2018).
13 The Role of Smart Cities for the Realization of. . .
233
2018a). Recent fatal accidents happening in test drives of self-driving e-cars from
Tesla
11 and Uber
12
– apparently happening when the semiautonomous driving
assistant was switched off – make people lose confidence in other vehicles running
on the same flawed software because a technical failure is a constructional flaw
affecting the entire production process of a specific series of vehicles (Eustacchio
2018). Lawyers warn that “. . .we cannot talk of technically proven, let alone officially approved driving systems as long as self-driving cars are still in the testing
phase” (Eustacchio 2018), stressing that legal accountability is transferring away
from the driver toward vehicle manufacturers and software engineers in case that
autonomous cars should ever become an “everyday phenomenon” (Eustacchio
2018). Furthermore, the FBI warns that autonomous cars could be used as “lethal
weapons,” e.g., by criminals overmodulating security features to make cars ignore
stoplights and velocity restrictions or by terrorists programming autonomous cars
equipped with explosives to turn them into autonomous bombs (Harris 2014).
Beyond that, autonomous cars can be hacked by laser pointers (Curtis 2015).
Autonomous e-cars are only one example for the safety risks of Smart City
technology. Cyber wars offer a range of possibilities for serious attacks on a city’s
economic and physical safety. As 50 billion appliances are supposed to be
IoT-connected on a global base by 2020 and as cyber-attacks are increasing in
both frequency and sophistication, and critical infrastructure is highly vulnerable
to cyber-attacks on essential services like electrical power, telecommunications,
health care, transportation, water supply, and the Internet (Rando 2014), cities
must brace themselves for potential cyber-attacks. Information systems can be
sabotaged by various methods, e.g., by the “Trojan horse” program or a “worm”
replicating and “infecting” multiple systems (Rando 2014). According to IBM,
compromised IoT devices like smart meters, smart watches, and building automation
systems can be weaponized in a way that they do not only pose a danger to the
devices’ owners but also to others so that a worm attack on a smart meter could cause
power outages for thousands of consumers, even though a worm is only one attack
vector in addition to the use of IoT devices as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
platform and the creation of globally distributed botnets (Rando 2014). Cyber
security experts warn that especially smart grids are highly susceptible to cyber
attacks due to weaknesses in the communications infrastructure and stress that certain
energy providers use a Smart Grid at the customer's site which uses the network
installed at the customer's site for datasharing via the customer's Wi-fi connection (Brandon 2013).
Cities using a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system are
especially vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Unifying decentralized facilities, SCADA
systems have poor security protocols lacking identification and encryption security
features (Thibodeaux 2017). Hackers attacking a city’s SCADA system could disable
11 Killing its test driver (The Guardian 2018).
12 An UBER car ran into a lady walking outside the zebra crossing who died in the clinic later
on (Levin and Wong 2018; The Guardian 2018).
13 The Role of Smart Cities for the Realization of. . .
233