Uber Technologies on Friday confirmed that it has employed two well-known security experts Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, who’ll be working at its Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. The move is an attempt by the ride-hailing service to bolster the technology they’re working on for its autonomous driving cars.
Charlie Miller who had been employed at Twitter, and Charles Valasek who worked at security firm IOActive will now be joining Uber as soon as next week. The duo hogged the limelight this month after showcasing how they took over a moving jeep and brought it to a halt on St.Louis highway by remotely hacking into its entertainment system.
They will start working at the company’s research facility in Pittsburgh which was opened in February. The center already has a number of autonomous vehicle experts which the company earlier hired from Carnegie Mellon University. With the company now delving deeper to develop its own driverless cars, Miller and Valasek could help Uber make the technology more robust and secure.
However, the hack apparently enraged a lot of executives at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV along with members of the automobile industry’s trade group. Following the Jeep Cherokee hack that was done using a cellular network to access the Jeep’s entertainment system, FCA USA LLC recalled a massive 1.4 million vehicles to prevent such instances in the future.
Meanwhile according to Uber, in the coming future driverless cars might fully replace thousands of human taxi drivers. The company seems to be taking the whole concept rather seriously, joining hands with top-tier universities and research centers for this initiative. The company also announced a partnership with the University of Arizona on Tuesday, to invest in mapping and safety technology needed for autonomous vehicles, which Uber plans to test on the streets of Tucson, Arizona.
While earlier this year, the company went all guns blazing hiring away more than 40 top scientists and researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. Also in March, Uber acquired digital mapping firm deCarta, a company with a technology offering search and turn-by-turn directions just to fulfill its dream of autonomous cars.
