The Federal Communications Commission issued a notice last week notifying the public that it is accepting comments on the Petition filed by Public Knowledge and the Open Technology Institute at New America, which requests a rule making process and emergency stay against car manufacturers from putting cars that can communicate with each other into the market.

The concern of the group is that after the hacking of several models of cars in the past year [view related posts here, here, and here], the use by car manufacturers of similar technology in new models presents “cybersecurity and privacy vulnerabilities” to the personal information collected by cars, as well as security vulnerabilities that allow cars to be infected with malware.

The group is requesting that specific rules be issued that require data privacy and security measures be included in the technology of new models of cars that will prevent hackers from being able to hack into cars’ wireless systems, and governing the communication between cars on the road.

According to the Group, “To date, the one thing that has prevented cyberterrorists from creating a ‘car zombie apocalypse’ by infecting thousands of cars with malware designed to crash them into crowds or one another has been the inability of cars to communicate with each other.”

[View source.]