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by tetromino_ 861 days ago
Did you know that fully analogue human-piloted cars are vulnerable? Researchers have recently described the "MadBrick attack": a malicious attacker can remotely disable a human-piloted car or cause it to veer off road by dropping a brick through the windshield from an overpass. Clearly, car manufacturers need to promptly address this class of vulnerabilities.
2 comments

This has been addressed already, though not by manufacturers. If you live (or drive through) an area where brick attacks are known to happen, you just put protective films on the windshield. It usually still ends up damaged but you can continue to drive just fine (I know because I have).
Really? It helps against a brick?
Absolutely, can confirm. As I said, the windshield will still break, but will still be held together by the film.

Now as far as keeping thieves out it is far less useful as it can be cut with a very sharp object (same things firefighters do if they need to take someone out of a car with such films).

In fact, for safety, I did keep the rear glass without a film.

Fortunately, I no longer need to drive though that place but when I did, it made a world of a difference.

I imagine the window still shatters but keeps together instead of spraying glass everywhere.

Similarly to glass with an embedded wire mesh.

Exactly this. In fact, it’s the same protection I have now at home in a couple of roof windows. Not because I expect attacks, but because I’ve got one more floor above and I want some safety in case something heavy and loose falls down during a storm.

The glass is gone anyways, but the goal is never to save the glass (that’s impossible, I guess) but to dramatically minimize the risk of personal injury.

Thats a little different in that the car wont override what ypu tell it to do from the brick attck but it potentially will for thw above attck.