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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 22 November 2019
Road-safety regulator rapped over regulating autonomous cars

By DAVID KOENIG ing those systems. "We will
AP Business Writer establish safety standards
The nation's road-safety when we determine that
regulator is under fire again the technology is proven,"
for what critics call lax over- Owens said.
sight of tests involving au- "If we establish standards
tonomous vehicles. too quickly, we run the risk
The National Highway Traf- of stymieing innovation."
fic Safety Administration NHTSA said it would seek
doesn't give enough direc- public comment on test
tion to companies devel- procedures to evaluate
oping automatous cars, advanced driving systems
the chairman of the Na- such as automatic emer-
tional Transportation Safety gency braking and adap-
Board said Wednesday. tive cruise control that
Senators quizzed NHTSA's keeps drivers a set distance
acting administrator on from vehicles in front of
why the agency hasn't set them.
standards for automatic Sen. Edward Markey, D-
braking and steering sys- Mass., cited a TV news re-
tems that are becoming port claiming to show Tesla
more common, and why drivers how to use a water
the agency hasn't con- bottle wedged in the steer-
fronted Tesla about widely In this Dec. 18, 2018 file photo, one of the test vehicles from Argo AI, Ford's autonomous vehicle ing wheel to trick the car
shared hacks that let driv- unit, navigates through the strip district near the company offices in Pittsburgh. into thinking they have their
ers take their hands off the Associated Press hands on the wheel, which
steering wheel. a distracted backup driver have safeguards in place evaluating their own safety is required to operate the
NHTSA's acting adminis- for letting an autonomous — for instance, to make assessments," Sumwalt told auto-pilot feature.
trator, James Owens, told Uber test car strike and kill a sure operators are paying the senators. He wanted to know what
lawmakers that his agency pedestrian last year. attention while the vehicles "There needs to be a feder- NHTSA has done to con-
is assessing autonomous The board said NHTSA has are moving. al look at these assessments front Tesla about counter-
vehicle technology and failed to adequately over- Currently those reports are to make sure that they are ing the purported hack to
researching how people in- see autonomous-vehicle voluntary, and few com- done properly." make sure "that these cars
teract with it. testing. Board member Jen- panies file them — 16 so Owens said NHTSA will eval- don't wind up killing peo-
He said, however, that the nifer Homendy accused far, while there are about uate the safety board's rec- ple."
agency fears it could stifle NHTSA of putting technol- 80 companies testing au- ommendations. Owens was unable to say
innovation if it goes too far ogy advancement above tonomous cars, according Sen. Maria Cantwell, D- whether the agency had
in regulating technology saving lives. to safety board Chairman Wash.., asked Owens raised the issue with Tesla.
that is still evolving. The safety board recom- Robert Sumwalt. whether NHTSA will set Markey said Tesla should
The comments at a hearing mended that NHTSA require He said some of those plans minimum safety standards disable auto-pilot until it
of the Senate Commerce car developers to submit are nothing more than mar- for automatic braking and fixes the problem.
Committee came one safety reports, and that keting brochures. steering systems. Tesla did not immediately
day after the transporta- NHTSA review the plans to "The manufacturers are not He responded that de- respond to requests for
tion safety board blamed make sure the companies going to be objective in velopers are still improv- comment.q

Disney Plus blames past hacks

for user accounts sold online

users" of Disney Plus. vices, meaning a breach to stop it," Hunt said in an
Disney and other traditional at one opens the door for email. Paul Rohmeyer, a
media companies are try- a hacker to gain access to professor at the Stevens
ing to capture the subscrip- the others. Institute of Technology in
tion revenue now going to Users can easily avoid this Hoboken, New Jersey, said
Netflix and other streaming by using strong passwords he's surprised that stream-
giants. Helped by promo- that are unique for each ing services haven't yet
tions, including a free year service, said Troy Hunt, implemented better secu-
for some Verizon custom- an Australian security re- rity such as multi-factor au-
ers, Disney Plus attracted searcher whose "Have I thentication.
In this Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019 file photo, a Disney logo forms 10 million subscribers on its Been Pwned?" website With multi-factor authenti-
part of a menu for the Disney Plus movie and entertainment first day. alerts people when their cation, users must enter a
streaming service on a computer screen in Walpole, Mass. The news site ZDNet found identity information is sto- code sent as a text mes-
Associated Press stolen account usernames len. sage or email when log-
By MATT O'BRIEN week's launch of its stream- and passwords selling for $3 "The Disney situation ap- ging in from a new device.
AP Technology Writer ing service. on underground hacking pears to be yet another The code helps ensure that
Disney said Disney Plus ac- The company reiterated forums. Disney's streaming credential stuffing attack people using stolen pass-
count passwords being Wednesday that it found service costs $7 a month or where hackers exploit a words or guessing them
sold in underground hack- no evidence of a security $70 a year. combination of customers can't use a service without
ing forums are coming from breach and that account Despite warnings by securi- reusing passwords and the also having access to the
previous breaches at other problems are limited to "a ty experts, users often reuse service provider not pro- legitimate user's phone or
companies, predating last very small percentage of passwords at multiple ser- viding sufficient defenses email account. q