Did you get a new car? A Toyota Prius, that’s nice. You know it can be hacked right? This dialogue is all too real. Computer hackers have allegedly taken control of a Toyota Prius, steering the car and applying its brakes….with a video-game controller. From The Telegraph, Charlie Miller, a security researcher with Twitter, and Chris Valasek, director of security intelligence at IOActive, took over some of the car’s systems using a laptop computer connected to its OBD (on-board diagnostic) port. I’m not just picking on Toyota either. The two hackers also claim to have disabled the brakes on a Ford Escape when traveling at low-speeds.

The world is becoming more and more digitized with every passing second. Rob Soderbery, Cisco Executive, believes that of the 40 billion devices that will be “connected” by 2020, 99 percent of the physical objects that will one day be connected currently aren’t. Smart cars, smart phones, smart washers, smart dryers and smart toasters. Everything is going to be “smart”.

The rise in connected devices will inevitably mean an increase in hackable gadgets, and with that comes growing security concerns over who will actually be in control of these machines, and how those security measures will be installed and managed.  Here are three potential dangers of hacked smart cars and smart homes:

3 Dangers of Hacked Smart Devices

• Upload-By

We all known what the term drive-by means, but what about an upload-by? In the example used above, it wasn’t so much a “hack” per se, because it involved physically connecting a laptop scan tool to the on board diagnostic (OBD II) port and used it to control or override certain functions. A portion of the instrument panel was removed to enable this. But let me give you this scenario: someone can override your car’s “smart” systems only to have your brakes go out when you get on the highway with little more than the push of a button. Not so smart anymore is it?

• Smart homes make for smarter robberies

The smarter your home is, the easier it might be to actually rob. Smart homes have a central “brain” to the home. A lot like you and me — the brain controls everything else in the home. So if a hacker can gain access to your mainframe, alarm turned off, smart devices wiped, he now has the wherewithal to enter your home unannounced, or even rob you of your valuables without ever stepping foot in your home.

• Smart cars, homes and devices don’t have human common sense

The fact is, smart-technology is built around numbers, processes and codes documenting every action. But even though my lights are “usually” on every day around 5pm, doesn’t mean they should be when I’m not home. The problem with smart technology is that there are no common sense clauses in binary code (yet).

The more we depend on technology, the more opportunity for both low-level and high-level issues to arise. From wasted electricity on your electric bill, to brakes going out because a circuit shorted. Depending on technology for day-to-day tasks and issues that normally were human-dependent, sets a precedence. What mistakes were always 100 percent human error now have the very real possibility of never giving the human a chance.