Uber Hires Security Researchers Behind That insane Jeep Hack

Moving forward, the two will join Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, a research lab that is working on autonomous (self-driving) vehicles.

Uber’s self-driving vehicle efforts are certainly gaining steam, and it will be interesting to see what the company comes up with.

Uber envisions autonomous cars that could someday replace its hundreds of thousands of contract drivers.

The a pair of hackers, Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller will get a job with the Uber Advanced Technologies Center that is actually headquartered in Pittsburgh. The automaker recalled 1.4 million vehicles as a result of the hack, which was detailed by Wired magazine in July.

Valasek said Friday that he’s leaving IOActive, an information security firm where he’s been the director of vehicle security research. As of late 2012, Miller worked for Twitter as an engineer. Recently it was announced that Uber would work with the University of Arizona to work on digital mapping technology and test the cars in Tucson.

For auto hackers, autonomous vehicles could someday soon represent a juicy new target.

“[Autonomous vehicles] have broader attack surfaces, more sensors, [and] the computer has the ability to control the steering”, says University of California at San Diego computer science professor Stefan Savage, who helped develop the first known wireless auto hacking technique in 2010 and 2011.

An Uber spokeswoman said Miller and Valasek will work with the company’s top security officers “to continue building out a world-class safety and security program at Uber.”