Mission Secure™ Inc., Perrone Robotics and University of Virginia Demonstrate Cyber Attacks and Protections for Automobile Braking and Acceleration

Critical Car Functions Automatically Protected With Secure Sentinel Technology in Pilot Project

Charlottesville, VA – March 23, 2015 – Mission Secure Inc. (MSi), a next generation cyber defense solutions provider focused on delivering advanced protections for physical systems to the defense, energy and transportation sectors, and Perrone Robotics Inc. (PRI), a leading-edge provider of robotic and autonomous ground vehicle solutions for commercial and military applications, today announced the completion of a track test pilot project that successfully demonstrated MSi’s Secure Sentinel platform’s capability to monitor, detect, inform and correct cyber attack scenarios focused on critical car functions in the areas of braking and accelerating a vehicle. The pilot project implemented a cyber assessment methodology originally developed by the University of Virginia with the Department of Defense for identifying highly consequential and easy to carry out cyber attacks on the car’s key functions.

Over the course of several months, the team developed, implemented and remotely triggered several cyber attacks on the car, taking over control of braking, acceleration and collision avoidance powered by LIDAR, and monitoring the response of the MSi Secure Sentinel Platform. The MSi Secure Sentinel Platform was successful in it’s capability to monitor key functions, including braking, acceleration and collision avoidance; detect when a cyber attack was underway; inform the driver and automatically take pre-defined and configurable corrective action to bring the car under driver control and to a safe driving situation. Without the onboard protection of MSi Secure Sentinel, the attacks resulted in high-speed frontal and rear end collisions, which, in an uncontrolled environment, would result in serious injury or death. In addition to the success of the MSi Secure Sentinel Platform, the pilot reinforced that these types of cyber attacks can be easily initiated in any car.