Traffic lights are dangerously easy to hack

Anyone with a radio hooked up to a laptop can possibly wreak havoc on traffic lights across North America. CNN reports University of Michigan researchers field-tested the hack in an undisclosed Michigan city, changing the traffic lights from a laptop in their truck. The traffic lights and controllers are made by Econolite, one of largest makers of traffic management systems in North America. Econolite’s traffic lights run on a computer network and communicate with one another just like home Wi-Fi, using radio signals. But controllers found inside metal boxes at every intersection, operate like an unsecured router — they are rarely encrypted and almost all use the same default username and password, which are published in online manuals. Econolite’s traffic lights are used in 100,000 U.S. and Canadian intersections.

Read the full story on CNN.

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